The (Not) Satisfied Dragon - Colette Rhodes Page 0,27

myself for the inevitable outpouring of disapproval.

Perhaps I was testing them. I hadn’t intended to, but maybe this was my way of proving that for all their talk, my mates hadn’t really changed. They didn’t really want anything different to what they’d wanted before.

“Okay,” Ezra replied, leaning forward with his elbows resting on the table. Why did he have to have such a stoic expression all the time?

“Okay?” I repeated hesitantly, glancing at the others. Oren’s face was as unreadable as his cousin’s, Seff and Levi were contemplative, and Hiram’s pretty gray eyes were bugging out of his skull.

“Why not?” Ezra replied with a shrug, surveying the five of us as we all gaped at him in silence. He seemed… fine with it. Like it wasn’t a totally absurd suggestion that went against everything that golds were supposed to do and be.

“Because females can’t serve on the Council,” Hiram spluttered eventually, looking between Ezra and me. “Right, Seff?”

Seff looked deep in thought as he contemplated Hiram’s question. “I don’t think they’re explicitly banned, but I’d need to check the founding documents…”

It was crazy. Wasn’t it? Golds didn’t serve on the Council. Golds stayed in the den. I’d spent most of my life hidden away from the world, and I wouldn’t even know where to begin in a room full of dominant dragons. If anything, I’d be a liability to my mates.

I knew logically, in the very back of my mind, that running to replace the flight of Councilors I’d killed took a special kind of hubris. The problem was, the potential consequences seemed so abstract, and the satisfaction so imminent. I wanted this.

No sitting around the den, waiting for my mates to get home, diligently scrubbing shirts and preparing meals. I would be out in the thick of it, making decisions, changing the world.

It was the kind of joyful optimism I hadn’t experienced since I was a kid.

“Have you all lost your fucking minds?” Hiram asked incredulously, pushing back from the table and getting to his feet. “This whole time we’ve been worried about finding Shira, keeping her safe, yet you’d bring her into the fucking belly of the beast now, willingly. Talk to me when you’ve come back to your senses,” he added bitterly, stalking out of the room.

I’d spent so much time on my own, I thought I knew everything there was to know about myself, but I was realizing the quickest way to get me to do something was to tell me I couldn’t. It was amazing the things I was learning about myself from interacting with others.

“I want this.”

“Of course you do. You need the challenge, the adventure. And Hiram said it was a bad idea,” Levi said, grinning. I narrowed my eyes at him, annoyed he was reading me better than I could read myself.

“Then it’s settled,” Ezra announced, looking surprisingly pleased. “The five of us will need to attend the Council meeting tomorrow as normal, let them discover on their own that Flight Milain won’t be coming back. Once the position is formally open, you’ll come with us, and we’ll put ourselves forward as a united flight.”

“Okay.” I was nodding along, a little dazed and only half absorbing what Ezra was saying. Me? On the Council? Part of me understood why Hiram was freaking out because the idea was insane.

Females weren’t councilors.

I had only the barest understanding of what the Council did, based on living with Flight Milain.

The councilors we were replacing had killed my family, and I’d killed them in response.

Also, females weren’t councilors.

“Shira? Did you hear me?” Ezra asked, cutting through my thoughts. His eyes glinted with amusement, rather than the impatience I thought I’d find there.

“No,” I replied honestly, making Levi and Seff chuckle.

“I said you’ll be here alone tomorrow, are you comfortable with that?”

“Comfortable?” I blinked. “Uh, I’ll be fine on my own.”

Ezra nodded like that’s what he expected me to say, and miraculously that was the end of it. For the first time since I’d met him, it felt like Ezra trusted me and it took me by surprise how much his trust meant.

This time, I wanted to keep it.

Chapter 7

I was buzzing with energy. Whenever I experienced powerful emotions, my fire magic felt closer to the surface, heating my skin and occasionally coming off as smoke. Usually, it was because of stress. Today, it was because of excitement. I was thinking every calm thought I could to keep it contained, because pouring smoke at a Council meeting when