The Rebellious Mate

6(i) The Offer

For Asena, the week of boring 'classes' stretched every hour into an eternity. Like in school, she set her head down on her bent arm to sleep. The Eros instructors weren't amused by her inability to stay awake. Again, she'd provoked the ire of the queen bee and her mean girls posse—in this case, Bebi and the Nasi leopard twins. Back then and now, she had no clue why they targeted her.

Bottom line: she was back to the hell she'd outgrown. Except she didn't even have Vic to stand up for her, but Duma filled that void, and even he was losing patience with her indifference to the 'process'.

After dinner, three days before the dreaded viewing, the bald intake agent she met in Puntland, in Northern Africa arrived to the Eros safe house in Bulgaria.

He beckoned her with a grin and squeezed her shoulders.

When she squirmed out of his hold, he whispered, "Your presence has been requested by an interested party and I'll be overseeing your meet-up."

While she mulled over that unexpected development, he took her elbow and led her out of the doors to the off-limits administrative wing.

"How much will your 'overseeing' cost me?" she demanded. The missing expense report niggled.

"You hurt me, child. Have we done anything to deserve your misgivings?"

"You're all shifter traffickers," she mumbled.

"And you're a willing client. As are the rest. It's prudent to be cautious, but not paranoid. Come along." In an office, he sat down and almost reverently placed a file on the table.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"I am Zane Toki, a pantheroid from Aberdares. Now to business. Prince Drach Nassau has paid to have tea with you."

Asena plonked herself in a chair too, and opened the file. Inside lay a two-sheet long printed bio-data. The second sentence threw her off guard. "A dragon?" she yelped and pushed the papers away as if they were a snake, not just any, but a cobra.

Dracos were the rarest of shifters. None resided in her homelands. Most assumed them to be extinct, or critically endangered with an unsustainable breedable population.

"Winged or—reptilian?" she squeaked.

"The former. Keep this development to yourself. We wouldn't want the others to be jealous. A private audience, that too from a prince, will earn you a few enemies."

Zane's solemn statement didn't worry her. The male who desired to meet her did. And why her?

'That is the million dollar question. We're unsuitable... he might as well find a fawnoid while at it,' Moggie wailed.

"Most entrants refrain from telling us the truth, even their real names, where they're from, why they chose this program, or what they expect. If the Prince pursues it further, with such an elite family, with the means to hire investigators, your story will be scrutinised," Zane warned.

Asena stared at him as she paled.

"Pay attention, child." He snapped his fingers near her face. "If there is a topic you should avoid, say you do not wish to speak about it. We've had a few deals fall through because the participants lied."

Flummoxed by the whole turn of events, she nodded.

"Drach Nassau is not to be trifled with." Zane went on to inform her the crown prince had lost his father at the age of twenty. No one knew how Ziad, the general who led the rebellion against the werewolf empire after the fall of the Romulus, died. His passing broke the back of the Olden resistance. "This is important. The Nassau did not bend a knee. The Emperor invited them back to court and signed a peace accord. They are proud creatures."