The Dragon Queen and her mates.
Chapter 78: Suppress his pride

Chapter 78: Suppress his pride

Yakov frowned as he sent a quick glance in the mirror that was sitting next to them on the wall, and did a double take before he rolled his eyes and spoke in a somewhat annoyed manner, " I do not pout, your majesty."

No one knew whether he was annoyed at being called out for pouting or was annoyed at himself for being flattered at being called cute by his mate.

But Bree was sure he did shoot her a pouty look sneakily.

Bree had to hide a smile as she placed her quill down on the table and looked at Yakov, now that she was talking with him, it would be pretty disrespectful of her if she didn’t look him in the eye. " Okay, let’s get down to serious business now, you came here because of what happened earlier this morning right? So, I hope that you have thought about an idea to tackle the situation."

The amusement flickered away from his eyes as Yakov nodded with a solemn expression. " The idea alone that someone sneaked in your office and even broke into the treasury that’s guarded by magic is something that’s enough to make people talk your majesty, if we want to deal with this situation we need to take down Duke Cilantro, unfortunately. But then again that man is such a greedy, sleazy and gutless excuse of a shifter that I don’t think it’s too much of a loss."

Dion: "....." Just say that you are still mad that the Duke danced with the Queen at the last ball when you couldn’t.

" You are right about that," said Bree nodding seriously along, since she didn’t inherit any memories from the original owner it was impossible for her to know that part of Yakov’s words were coming from his personal feelings. Instead she kind of believed that what Yakov said was right, the Duke seemed to have been getting bolder and bolder, first he asked for a small concession and then he asked for a bigger one and what was more she hasn’t seen any tax receipts being paid by the Duke Cilantro. " The Duke seemed to be thinking along the lines that he can do whatever he wants because——"

" You have been a little too nice to him?" said Yakov a bit too eagerly with a sweet smile on his face. But those amber eyes were a block of two ice chips..which was saying something give those shades were the warmest shades of amber that she has seen.

Bree cleared her throat, obviously, the one who was a little too nice to Duke Cilantro wasn’t her but that was something she could not say in her defence so, she raised her hand and submitted to defeat, " You are right, I was indeed a little nice to him but can we move past that and come to the point where you will tell me about the excellent plan of yours, I do believe you do have one?"

Slightly mollified with her praise, Yakov tugged on the collar of his suit as he said, " Well, I do have a plan, your majesty, earlier we decided to send Aileen to Duke Cilantro’s territory but now I think we can no longer do it."

" Why is that?" asked Bree, sounding genuinely thrown off the loop, she was waiting for Aileen to go and get her the information that she needed to set that Duke Cilantro on the right path damn it!

" Because of this incident, your majesty," explained Yakov patiently as he carefully broke every piece of his concern in front of her. " I have been thinking that if we sent Aileen to the Duke’s territory at the moment, we will have to keep it under the wraps for I fear if we slip the news out my aide will be in danger and if we stay silent, then it will send out the message that we are doing nothing despite the Duke doing tax invasion and asking the other territories to pay unsubstantiated taxes, and if the ministers see us doing nothing then they will keep submitting memorandums, one after another. I fear even if we don’t want to do it, we have to travel to the territory of the Duke by ourselves."

" Travel to Duke Cilantro’s territory?" Bree felt her nerves kick up, oh no, this was something that she didn’t want to do, if she was to leave now then wouldn’t it mean that she will have to travel with one of her consorts and most probably Yakov? Since he was the one who was responsible for all the official work like this? Her fingers twitched, though he was a lot nicer to her now that she was no longer the Queen she was in the past but he was also the man who devised the plan to kill her, so how can she even think of something like travelling with him? That too alone?

Yakov nodded his head, he could see the hesitancy in those eyes of her that were flickering with uneasiness and knew she was having double takes about leaving with him since he was her first consort and the Chancellor of the Empire, it goes without saying that he will have to follow her on the case of tax invasion and Bree wasn’t happy about it, which sort of did put his mood off but he was willing to take this bet.

These past weeks he has been noticing the changes in Bree, she was no longer the same woman—— not the one who would sit in her office and let the work be done by either him or Dion, she was actively participating in the work, it was obvious that she hated the work, hated finishing the pile of documents that sat on the top of her table but she tried and succeeded in it.

If she was willing to work hard and change then so could he.

He rubbed the tips of his fingers and checked the time in the clock hovering over the wall opposite him, Bree has prolonged this silence for two minutes and ten seconds exactly but he wasn’t going to snap at her like he always did, at least not until she gives him a reason to, his pride though demanded to leave after seeing her hesitation but he was willing to hold that urge down for this woman because she kind of made him want to challenge her limits.

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