The Dragon King’s Substitute Bride
Chapter 5

MIDAS

There were three unspoken constants in Midas' life.

From his childhood as prince and heir to the Dragon's throne, right up till the day the power of the dragon fire awakened in him; the result of a ritual his father had done on the day of his birth to lead him on the path he now trod. These three things had never changed.

He was always treated with the highest of respect. When he walked into a room, his cold, sharp gaze sweeping from end to end, people bowed so low they nearly scraped their heads against the floor.

His words were law and his decisions were final. No one dared to disobey him and if they did, his wrath was a swift, merciless thing that didn't stop until it devoured all in its path. And, he always...always got what he wanted.

Yet in one day, a single person, a woman with eyes the same blue of a summer sky had somehow managed to so thoroughly obliterate all three of those unchanging sacred rules.

Maybe that was why as he strode out of his chambers, he who had slain terrifying beasts and conquered nations, razing them to ashes with a single command, who had never thought twice about passing judgment now felt so deeply unsettled. It was a feeling he was unused to and it irritated him to no end.

He had tried to push the image of her on his bed, shaking with her anger and pain away from his mind but the fear that been etched upon her face was seared into his brain and it followed him around refusing give him even a moment's respite. "My Lord...

He snapped at the bowing Ryder yet unable to remember a time he'd be so grateful to have his thoughts interrupted. "Yes, what is it?"

"He has arrived and awaits your audience my lord."

Ah. His blacksmith was here, doubtlessly bearing with him newly crafted weapons of the finest materials and inlaid with jewels and precious stone. Nothing like instruments of war to remind a king of his duties and the realm he was sworn to protect. Surely that would return his wandering mind to its normal state.

It had not.

Instead as his sat in the throne room, chin cradled in the palm of his hand, listening to the royal weapons master drone on and on, an endless spiel about this sword and that spear, he had half a mind to throw the oblivious man in prison. She would not relinquish her hold on his mind and he was slowly crossing the bridge from irritability into anger.

Midas knew he was not an easy man.

He had a firece temper and an iron will and sometimes in that temper, his decisions were harsh but none of them had ever troubled him this much.

"Get me the chief Ryder."

The weapons master startled at the interruption and the tone of his King's voice dropped the sword in his hand and it clattered with an echoing clanging noise to the ground. "But my Lord..."

He raised one heavy brow. Was his entire court going mad?

The weapons master scampered from the room. "...at once your majesty."

Was she a witch as well?

Could she have perhaps cast some sort of spell on him?

"You sent for me my Lord"

"I did"

The chief Ryder watched him. "You are troubled."

Midas gazed out of the tall glass windows to the left of his heavy gold throne.

The sun had long since set and darkness had fallen upon the 5th realm and the moon a glowing white sentinel had taken it's place, to stand watch over the night's sky.

"It would seem Leo, that I have made a decision I do not quite like and it has filled me with an odd...sense of something I do not understand."

The chief Ryder measured his words carefully

The King was in a mood and any one who valued their head and wanted it to remain attached to their neck would do well not to annoy him. "Perhaps my King has made a decision in anger and now...regrets it"

Midas turned his head to look at him with a frown. "Regret... what a ridiculous notion. I have never regretted a thing in my entire life"

"Well if my Lord has never felt this feeling before how does he know what it is and what it is not?"

Midas thought for a while, his brows furrowed in concentration.

"If it pleases the king to pardon my inquisitiveness...does this decision by any chance involve the former princess of Averia?"

A scowl clouded his face. "Princess, try conniving deceitful wench." He spat, the anger at their deceit returning with a vengeance.

"I'm afraid I do not understand my King"

"Averia tricked me, sending me a slave girl instead of the princess and now the portal stands closed for a thousand years. They think they have outwitted me but they forget that I am Midas the immortal. A thousand years mean nothing to me and the price of their sins shall be visited on their children's children"

The chief Ryder ignored the part of his brain screaming at him to shut up.

"Does my Lord not think that maybe this...attempt at subterfuge was a matter in which she... being a slave... had no choice"

Midas got up from his throne and walked past his only friend and out the throne room doors. "Your rationality is of no help to me right now."

But Leo's words refusing to be forgotten had crept into his mind to take their place beside the face of the one who troubled his thoughts.

Hera.

Her name against his wishes conjured up images of slave girls, their hair the color of Albanoe's forest 3 moons before winter when the falling leaves would catch the sun rays to glow a bright, fierce orange.

Of a body that trembled beneath his hands and a kiss that sent the blood in his veins rushing till he was filled with a primal longing and craving he was wrought to satisfy.

This feeling was one he knew well.

Simple, unbridled l**t.

He pushed open the doors and the woman with her long black hair and scantily covered curves lept to her feet in fear.

"My King! I did not expect you tonight"

He stalked into the chamber and unclasped his royal cloak to place it on her vanity chair before untying the strings of his shirt. "am I now required to inform you of my movements in my own palace or am I to understand that you are now dissatisfied with your position and would like to be replaced?"

"Of course not." She had recovered her composure and her voice is sweet and soft, a seductive candence as she swayed towards him, her sharp green eyes roaming over his features.

She wrapped her arms around his neck.

"You are troubled my king"

He pulled her roughly against him. "You speak too much"

But even when he kissed her, her expert hands pulling the shirt from over his head and tracing the planes of his lean muscled body, something felt off.

It was a something he didn't even know had been missing.

Until her.

Damn it, damn it all to hell.

"My Lord...your highness! Where are you going?"

But he stormed out of the room, angrily pulling his shirt over his head. Then the bells began to ring out.

"f**k!"

He moved with dizzing speed, unaware that he was running but knowing he had to get her before the gates opened.

If the sight of the dragon king running through his halls was a surprising thing then his presence in the cellar was an even greater shock and the two Giants at the entrance were not immune to it. "You. Give me your swords"

Confused, the guard by the left took off the sheathed weapons strapped to his back and handed them to him, scabbard and all.

"Raise the grates" Midas growled, furiously rolling his sleeves and tying his long hair into a pile on the top of his head.

The bells tolled for the eleventh time.

The guards glanced at each other. "Your majesty..."

He whirled on them. "You dare defy me?"

They shook their heads vigorously, the braver of them speaking. "Never my King..it's just, it's almost midnight my Lord, the Prisoners..."

The 12th ring eched loudly in the tunnel.

He drew the first sword from it's leather holding and it's steel surface reflected the orangey glow of the burning torches.

"That is my business to deal with, but if I get in there and something has happened to her..." he drew the second sword. "...you can be rest assured neither of you will see another day. Now Open...the gates." The grates began to rise up slowly, the gears churning loudly.

It was not fast enough and not caring for the preservation of his royal clothes, he slid to the floor and under the bars into the darkness beyond, pulling his swords behind him.

He didn't remember getting to her cell, not really.

They came at him the minute they saw him, which was stupid of them for not only had they recognized him, they were without weapons and he had two he knew bloody well how to use. Maybe being locked up in the dark had addled their senses.

He dove and spun, kicked and dodged, his swords moving with such speed they were nearly imperceptible blurs. Sweeping arcs of light that reached his targets with startling accuracy. Maiming and drawing blood.

He hadn't intended to kill anyone of them, he simply intended to clear a path till he found the object of his obsession.

Until he heard her scream.

He counted five of them in her cell, brutish hulking villans. Then he spotted the one holding her down beneath him on the cold dirt floor and the rage completely took over.

She may have been a pawn in a scheme to trick him. A scheme someone would definitely pay dearly for.

But she was his; Bride to the Dragon King Midas of the 5th realm.

And no one...no one touched what belong to Midas.

It was over in seconds and he stood at the entrance, unaware of the blood splattered against the walls of room and on his clothes.

His eyes still burning the color of his dragon, his chest heaving with what remained of his anger.

But when she dove into his arms with enough force to knock him over, nothing had ever felt more right.