The Dragon Queen and her mates.
Chapter 280: Tugs and pulls

Chapter 280: Tugs and pulls

"What do you mean?" Rosalie’s eyes hardened as she looked at him. "You said that you understand my plight and the sufferings that I have gone through."

"I do. Of course, I do. But that doesn’t mean that I need to give you what you are asking from me." Cian might be a siren but he also had a bottom line: he would never do such a thing as sleep with another woman when he already found his mate.

Even if there were hardly any feelings between him and Bree, he had the basic instincts of craving her and only her. He and his beast would never sleep with another woman who had nothing to do with him.

"Why!?" Rosalie’s hands clenched so tight that her knuckles went white. "All you need to do is sleep with me for a night; I am a pitiful woman, Cian. Can’t you just let me have the happiness of having a child?"

Cian backed up a few steps because he could sense that the woman was getting agitated. "If that’s what you want, then it is fine. You can look for anyone but keep me out of it."

"Cian, do you really have to be so harsh? The empress clearly doesn’t like you... and I —"

He bristled when she spoke in that tone. He stilled and said, "You don’t have a clue about my life, your highness. So I will like it if you keep your nose out of it. Whether the Empress likes me or not is my problem, not yours, and she likes me enough to make me her consort."

She scoffed upon hearing his words. "You do not need to lie to yourself, Cian. Do you really think that the empress likes you? She married you because she wanted to stabilise her court. Some people wanted to take advantage of the fact that her mate was siren and she was hesitant to take you as her consort."

"In the end, because the struggle got too problematic, she had no choice but to accept you." She gave him an assessing look before adding, "And it is not like you like her either. If you did, then you would have slept with her by now; it is not going to be hard for you."

Cian hardly restrained himself from biting his teeth down harshly. Because these were the words that he had heard countless times from Omar. Just because he inherited his father’s kind, he had to hear these things again and again.

"And I am not asking you to break your bond with her and marry me. All I want is a child, Cian. Surely you want to have one too, right? Remember what we talked about the last time? Having kids and a family. That’s why I resonated with you so much. We have so much in common, don’t you think? Unlike Her Majesty, who has to care about multiple things—I am much freer than her. I can have a child without considering anything."

It was true; Cian, as a siren, wanted nothing more than to have a child of his own. A family’s warmth where no one would scheme against one another—that was what he wanted. When he was young, the idea that he would become a tool for seduction was firmly imprinted in his head, which made Cian crave a normal family.

Once he even heard Omar say to his second brother that it was a shame that he got a mate so early on; if Bree’s arrival had been delayed, he could have used Cian to form alliances. And as for how he would do it, Cian had a very good idea about it.

However, this child that Rosalie spoke of, he wanted it from Bree and no one else.

"I can give you what you want. You are just a fourth consort, Cian; even if you try your best with your status and position, you can never get the title of Emperor. What’s more, you are nothing but a trophy sent to Her Majesty. Do you really believe that you can get that throne? You won’t. But if you give me a child, then that child can become the ruler of my fief. And you won’t lose anything because I do not want you to mate with me."

"Just give me a temporary mark, which would allow me to get pregnant."

Cian felt his beast flap his tail in anger at the very thought of it. He wanted nothing to do with this woman, let alone having a child with this crazy woman. "Have you lost your mind? Even if sirens could ignore a mating bond and block it, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it can be done when and how I want."

"But it can done—"

"That’s only possible when we do not have any emotions with the person we share a bond with. Unless there is this sheer need to get away from our mate, we cannot ignore the mating bond. While I am not exactly bare with her majesty, I also don’t refuse her company and the bond. Thus, it is impossible for me to do such a thing with her."

And even if he let go of himself and gave in to the temptations, he was sure that the consequences would be dire. "So, stop trying to cling to me, your highness. I truly cannot help you."

Her lips thinned even further when she heard his firm rejection. "But you don’t love her. If you do not love her, then whats the point of staying with her?"

"It has nothing to do with you, like I told you," Cian turned on his feet after he was done wasting his precious time. He headed out of the room and said, "You can ask other sirens, one who is not mated and you can have the child that you so badly crave."

"You cannot walk away from me, Cian!"

"Well, I am doing just that," he stated. "I am sorry for what happened to you; I really am but what happened to you doesn’t give you the right to take just whatever you like!"