Frostbite (The Dragonian, #3) - Adrienne Woods Page 0,96
that you won’t tell anyone who I am,” I said and he managed to shake his head. I forced my hands to squeeze tighter. I felt a smile emerge on my lips. This felt so good. I’d never had this kind of strength before, and I wanted more. I needed more. A bit tighter. “Promise Cheng, or I will kill you and the truth will die with you.”
His face became red and his lips turned blue. I loved that color. It looked so freakin’ awesome.
“Fine,” he managed to get out and my hands held on a bit tighter. He hit my shoulders, and I realized that I hadn’t really heard his reply. I let go.
He coughed while I still sat on his lap, pinning him down with my newfound strength.
“I promise.”
I grabbed a handful of his black hair and pulled his head up to face me. “Promise what? If you didn’t forget, I was a dragon myself until a couple of days ago. I know the drill.”
He stared at me with his dark eyes. “I promise I won’t tell a living soul who you are.”
I hit him twice on the cheek, hard. “That’s my boy.”
“Now get the hell off me.” He pushed me back into my seat.
That felt good and I could still feel the smirk on my face. Hell that’d felt amazing. I couldn’t recall that I’d ever felt so alive. Not even with Cara inside of me. This was like super awesome. It was hard to explain. The adrenaline of feeling a soft thumb of a pulse underneath your hands, and the more you tightened the faster it beat. It was like—
“You know what the hell is happening to you, right?” Cheng said as he finally started the Range Rover and pulled down the street again.
“What is happening to me, oh clever one?” I mocked him.
He opened the flap on my side of the roof and I saw the mirror. “Look for yourself. Look how pretty your eyes are Elena.”
I looked and froze as I saw green irises with red where the white should be. It wasn’t lack of sleeping kind of red, it was evil red. I kind of liked it. “So?” I said in an ‘I-don’t care’ tone. “It means shit.”
“You don’t get it, do you? Blake is awake, Elena. What you feel isn’t your feelings, it’s his. Your bond—”
“Don’t you dare say that!” I yelled at him. “I will kill you if you say that again. I don’t have a bond with him.”
He lifted up his hands in mock surrender and shut his mouth.
My smile was gone now, and anger filled me again. I hated Blake fucking Leaf. The anger stayed with me for a long time as I just saw his stupid face in front of me, knowing who I was this whole time. He killed all the people I loved and now they wanted me to claim him. He didn’t deserve a rider, he didn’t deserve to be claimed. He deserved to be Goran’s pet.
I watched out my window for what seemed like hours and let my hatred for Blake Leaf boil inside of me. When I saw the board that said ‘Welcome to Elm’, I realized how fast Cheng was really driving.
For someone who’d just promised he wouldn’t tell anyone who I was, he was sure anxious to get back to the academy. Then it hit me.
Why did the chief of that village want Cheng so badly? He had the Rubicon, and yet he wanted a stupid, insignificant Crown-Tail.
“Why did the Khumutsi want you?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said and looked out his window for a second.
“You’re lying, I can hear it in your voice. You do have an ability, don’t you?” I said with a smirk.
“Elena, I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Come on Cheng. I’m not stupid. All the dragons can do something, yet I have no idea what it is Crown-Tails do.”
“We have our theories, Elena. That is it.”
I laughed. “No, it’s more than that.”
“You are crazy, that is what you are. You think you know everything, you know nothing. You are so blinded by everything that is going on with you in the moment that you don’t even see the truth anymore. I’m one of your best friends Elena, you should know me by now.” He said that Latin incantation again and waited.
I waited for it to come, any moment now and I would feel it, but nothing came. I started to laugh.