Too Late for My Shifters' Regret novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: First Blood

I didn't put it down.

I held it against my chest, and the cold soaked through my dress.

"It's alive," I said.

"I know."

"How do you know?"

He came closer and stopped an arm's length away.

He didn't reach for it.

His hand was shaking.

"Because I can hear it," he said.

Upstairs, my father shouted for his wine.

"Dragon eggs are crown property," Cassius said quietly. "Owning one outside the Reach is a hanging crime. Your father has one in a crate marked for scrap."

"Then he doesn't know it's alive."

"Or he doesn't care."

I looked at the stamp again.

SELL FOR SHELL.

Somebody was going to grind this thing up for powder.

I took off my cloak, wrapped the egg in it, and tucked the bundle under my arm.

"What are you doing?" Cassius said.

"Taking it."

"If he finds out..."

"He won't. He hasn't looked at me in twelve years. He's not going to start now."

I carried the wine upstairs and poured my father's glass and Delphine's.

They toasted Delphine's portrait in the Hall of Stones.

Nobody noticed my cloak was missing.

That night, in my dormitory room, I put the egg in the basket my roommate's fox wasn't using and lay down beside it with my hand on the shell.

There was barely anything in me.

I gave it what there was.

At midnight the shell went from freezing to only cold.

I fell asleep like that, and when I woke up Cassius was sitting on the floor by the bed, watching the basket.

"You didn't sleep," I said.

"Dragons don't, much."

"You're not a dragon."

He didn't answer that.

The first qualifier was five days later.

The arena was packed.

Stone benches full of students, the Headmistress in her box, the long scoring wall where small copies of every competitor's rank stone glowed in a row.

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