by Abigail Owen
A boy with dark blond hair and familiar golden eyes watching from behind a massive gilt throne, then running through a corridor tucked behind that chair.
The same boy alone and scared, making his way to other dragons, blue dragons, and being turned away by the king—Thanatos she assumed, because the man in the vision wasn’t Ladon—shunned.
Now the boy was hiding in a cave. Alone. Except another boy—one with dark hair and blue eyes—brought him food. Ladon. They’d known each other all this time?
The scene jumped years, to a teenaged Brand, recognizable as the man he would become, training with Hershel, living in this cavern, meeting with Ladon in secret.
As fast as the vision came on, the images faded, leaving her reeling from the fact that it had come with pleasure instead of pain, and without Brand’s help. Even more so, from what she’d discovered.
Brand was the rightful King of the Gold Clan?
No way could she be wrong about that. Suddenly so many things about him clicked into place—the changing accents, why he’d been a rogue dragon, his insistence on doing Ladon’s bidding. Uther had murdered his family, taken the throne, and somehow Brand had escaped, turning rogue rather than being killed alongside his parents and siblings. Like her, a usurper had destroyed his family and taken everything from him. Only she’d had her mother, her sisters. He’d been cast out alone.
Kasia put a hand over her mouth as the reasons driving his decisions, including mating her, sank in. Brand had mated her for a purpose.
Revenge.
All this time, he’d said he needed a clan to get it. She’d been leverage when he first found her, something she already knew. Leverage to gain not just the Blue King as an ally, but Ladon’s entire clan, he’d said. Like the wolves, one dragon was dangerous, multiple even more so.
But mating her… That gave him the kind of leverage that would enable him to exact the biggest form of revenge—taking back the gold throne and forcing every other king to submit to him.
Brand wanted to be High King. Needed to be. Finding her had given him that opportunity. And somehow, she’d fallen for him and given him exactly what he wanted.
So why was he fixing things with Ladon? The king would have to bow to Brand soon enough. Maybe he wanted to keep his alliance with the blue dragons.
Even the High King needed allies. Or, more accurately, pawns.
That was it… I’m nothing more than a pawn. Used, just like her mother warned her.
Numbness gave way to pain, sort of like having her chest ripped open with a dragon claw. Tears burned the back of her eyes, demanding she give in and break down, but Kasia sucked in a harsh breath, holding them off through sheer will. Crying never helped a damn thing, and she wasn’t into pity parties.
Her mother had taught her that, too.
I’ve been such a fool.
She shoved off the bed and made her way to the bathroom, where she turned on the shower and got under the spray of blessedly hot water. How he’d managed to pipe and heat water down here was a vague secondary thought. She really didn’t give a shit as to the hows and whys. Hot water was the important factor.
Okay.
The way to deal with this mess was to put one foot in front of the other. Even if that led to tying herself to Ladon. She couldn’t mate him, or she’d kill him. But she could still be his Queen. That didn’t require mating. She’d just spend the rest of her days with a man she could never love like the one she’d already given her heart to.
I love him.
The abruptness of that realization sucked air from her lungs, even as she acknowledged what she’d already known. Hell, he’d asked her to choose him last night, and she had, gods help her. Of course she loved him.
But finally letting herself face that truth broke something inside her. Because facing that truth meant facing a future without him. A long, long future.
A keening wail forced itself from her mouth, and the tears she’d been holding back joined the spray of the shower running down her face. Kasia couldn’t stay upright under the onslaught of pain, doubling over, wrapping her arms over her middle, and finally sinking to the floor. She pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, then let the emotion wash over her, sobs shuddering her entire body.
Even after her despair was spent in the form of headache-inducing tears, and the water had long since turned cold, she still sat. Quietly. Not wanting to face the world or any more truths.
Eventually, she started to shiver. Her ass had long ago lost feeling on the rough stone floor, and she was aware of Maul, making worried little cries on the other side of the bathroom door.
Exhausted and defeated, she reached up and turned off the shower.
“I’m coming, Maul,” she assured the hellhound.
She forced herself to her feet and stepped out from behind the stone partition. Kasia glanced around through puffy eyes. No towels.
With a sigh, she ignited her own fire, allowing it to flow over her skin, drying and warming her better than any towel could have, anyway.
Then she glanced in the mirror. And froze.
The sight of herself, naked and aflame, triggered a memory of one of the visions she’d had last night. This exact moment in time. An image of herself looking in the mirror, flames covering her body and lifting her hair, eyes red and swollen from crying. Even the emotions of the moment. She had seen this moment.
Why?
Because I’ve changed. Something has changed.
The way she’d gotten there was different, the racking pain gone, and more vivid and with sounds and color.
Kasia closed her eyes and did what Brand had made her do last night. Let go. She let the flame take over her body, opening herself to her power, and reached for the memories. What had she seen?
A vision of Skylar dressed all in black, her long hair pulled back in her customary braid, standing beside a familiar tree. Though Kasia couldn’t quite place it, she knew she’d seen that twisted pine somewhere.
A man inside a cell high in the mountains. So high the sky was more black than blue. Was it at night? She couldn’t see much of him as he sat on a long stone bench and stared out at the stars.
Gods. Why was any of this important?
A flash of Chante letting a group of five men into the Blue Clan’s mountain through a side door she’d never seen.
A tall, skinny man in an ornately embroidered suit. Skinny to the point of appearing emaciated, with his bones jutting out from under his skin, and pale almost to the point of being albino. He was speaking. “I can save your sister, my queen, but you must act fast.”
With a gasp Kasia’s eyes flew open, and she lost her concentration, the flames turning to smoke as they died.
Save her sister? No one else knew about her sisters. Which one? And something about that “my queen” reference felt off. Was this yet another vision that revealed a more distant future? Either way…
I have to keep my sisters safe.
She’d spent enough damn time wallowing in that shower. Too much. Kasia summoned the fire and closed her eyes again. She needed to watch that vision more closely.
To her shock, she returned to that exact image, which she then watched over and over, searching for any sign, any clue. But nothing jumped out at her.
Before she could end her own personal rerun session, another vision followed.
Uther, leading a squad of golden dragons, flying over what looked to be a small town. Kasia frowned as that image settled in her mind, as though she were flying not with the dragons, but what? Above them? Then movement on the ground caught her attention, and she narrowed her focus. Did the people below see the dragons?
Wait.
Those weren’t all people walking among the buildings. Those were…
“Wolves,” she whispered. The shifters from the woods. She was too high to recogn
ize any, but she was certain of it in the same way that she’d known she’d lose her mother the night she died. The second her mother’s voice had sounded in her head, telling her the time had come, she’d known. She knew now, too.
Angelika. I have to warn them.
Thank the gods the lead wolf, Bleidd, had told her where to find them if she changed her mind.
Kasia snapped her eyes open and shut off the fire like flipping a switch. “I’m coming out, Maul. Go into the other room to wait for me.” Ignoring Maul’s worried whines, she yanked on her dress from last night. No way would she fit into Brand’s shoes, and his clothes would swamp her. At least her boots were semi-practical.
Dressed, she hurried toward the door, only to pull up short when Maul jumped in front of her, blocking the exit with his bulk. He gave a low growl and shook his head.
“We have to go, Maul.”
Another shake of his head, then an image of Brand popped into her head, Maul’s memory of his leaving. Brand’s face was drawn, almost gaunt with worry. “I have to go to Ladon. Keep her safe, Maul,” he said.
So now her hellhound was listening to Brand? Fantastic. “I understand Brand is trusting you, but I have to do this.”
Even alone in this cave, she refused to speak her sisters’ names aloud.
Something in her voice must’ve caught his attention, because Maul eased from his crouch and cocked his head.
“Dragons are about to come down on top of a group of wolf shifters. I have to warn them.” Warn Angelika.
Maul’s fur rose on his back, releasing the scents of smoke and death heavily into the air, but still he shook his head, projecting an image of Brand.
Kasia shook her head. “We can’t tell any of the dragons. They despise wolves.” Not to mention being in the dark about Angelika. She wouldn’t risk exposing her sister. “Helping them is up to me.”
He regarded her for a long moment, then pulled back his lips to expose his teeth as he gave a low rumble. Kasia wasn’t bothered, she knew his show of aggression was his way of saying, “Let’s fight.”
Her shoulders dropped, relieved she wouldn’t have to try to get past him. “We have to get to France, the Pyrenees near Beget. Fast.”
Maul turned his back to her, their childhood signal for her to climb on. Kasia allowed her tight lungs to expand a little more freely. At least she had a hellhound on her side.
She scrambled up onto his back, sitting on the giant dog like a horse, holding on to the leather hump at his shoulders. “We can take turns teleporting.”
…
Brand lay on the cot in his cell, the only furniture provided, arm flung over his eyes. To his guards, he probably appeared as though he were sleeping. In actual fact, he was plotting.
He needed to get Kasia away from this place. Ladon would never forgive her for mating another dragon. He probably wouldn’t try to mate her himself, even after dispatching Brand, because of the whole burned to ashes thing if she didn’t choose him, but he’d hold her here anyway. Even against her will. That was no kind of life, especially not for Kasia.
Ladon had already set off to bring her back. Brand could do nothing about that now. But could he get them both out of here once Ladon returned?
A ruckus—the pounding of running feet and the low rumble of raised voices—filtered down the long, drafty hallway that led into the cells.
Brand stopped bothering with his pretense of sleep and levered up. Just in time for Ladon to burst into the foyer-like room where Ivar and Rainier sat, watching over their prisoner.
“Where the fuck is she?” Ladon demanded.
Brand jumped to his feet, fear surging. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know,” Ladon scoffed.
Panic spiked, riding in on a crash of adrenaline and fear for his mate. Brand grasped the bars of his cell. “She has to be there. I left her there with Maul.”
“The place was empty.”
“Let me out.” A command, not a request.
“So you can scurry off to meet your lover and fly off into the sunset? You’re a traitor and awaiting execution.”
Brand shook the bars, not that they budged, desperation fueling the futile attempt. “You have to let me out. She could be in danger.”
“No,” Ladon spat. He stalked away.
Impotent fury and the need to find and protect his mate tipped Brand over the edge of a rational-thinking man to release the caged beast inside him. With no thought of doing so, Brand started to shift. These prisons had been built to hold dragons, including magical wards and steel strong enough to hold under an attempted shift. He’d probably kill himself trying, but his mate was in danger. Rational thinking was beyond him now.
As his body expanded, he pushed against the walls and bars of his prison until the dragonsteel dug into his skin. Still, he didn’t stop the shift. Couldn’t. The dragon inside him was in control now. The bars became knives slicing through the rough hide of his scales along his left hind leg. Brand howled his pain but didn’t stop. Next his leg would snap; he could feel the bone bending under the constriction of the space.
“Stop!” Ladon’s shout pierced Brand’s fevered mind. “I will release you.”
Brand’s head was jammed into the corner of the room, so he could no longer see Ladon or his men, but the telltale beep, beep, beep of a combination being keyed into the lock panel, followed by the snick of the lock releasing, reached his ears.
Even in his dragon form, as feral as he could turn, he had enough sense to obey. Brand stopped and reversed the shift until he stood before the open door. The bigger concern was the three gashes in his thigh. His wrist, which he hadn’t noticed in the crush, ached, but he could deal with that. He suspected the steel bars had reached the bone on his leg, but he didn’t have time to stop and see Fallon for faster healing.
Ladon stared at him, his expression a cocktail of fury and incredulousness. “Dammit, Brand. I should’ve just let you kill yourself. Over a damn woman.”
“That damn woman is my mate,” Brand growled, his dragon still ready to break loose and plow through anyone who intended to get in his way. “You never deserved her.”
Every warrior in the room growled, but not the king. Ladon’s brows drew down in a frown, patently confused. “Do you love her?” His tone implied that possibility would be sheer insanity.
Brand almost felt sorry for the guy. Hell, he’d been the guy, but he didn’t have the fucking time to answer this shit. “My mate is in trouble.”
“There’s no trail to follow. She’s in the wind.”
“Get my phone,” Brand snapped.
They’d taken it from him when they locked him in here. Ivar snatched it from a drawer in the wall and tossed it over.
No signal. Dammit.
He needed to get out of these dungeons. Now. Urgency drove him to ignore the blood trailing behind him in a splatter of red on the stone floor.
“You should put a tourniquet on that before you bleed out,” Ladon observed conversationally as he followed behind Brand.
“Fuck off.”
A snort sounded behind him. “I knew you were holding back with me all this time.”
Brand ignored the man. Watching his phone for the signal bars. As soon as he had four, he stopped. Pulling up short, he tapped the screen to get to the app managing his home security system. After inputting his fingerprint and password, he checked the feed from his cameras backing it up until he found footage of Kasia still in his home.
What the hell was she doing on the floor of the shower? Was she okay? Had someone taken her? Hurt her?
“Why is she crying?” Ladon asked over his shoulder.
Gutted didn’t begin to describe the pain slashing through him. She was crying? He tapped the screen to bring up the audio. Sure enough, his mate was crying her eyes out. Bile burned up his t
hroat. He’d broken his mate.
Brand clenched his teeth and forced himself to move forward in the feed. He needed to find her before he could fix whatever was broken. As he watched in fast forward, she got out of the shower, then seemed to stare at herself in the mirror for a long moment before lighting on fire. A vision without him there to help her control it?
“Was my place burned all to hell?” Brand asked.
“No.”
As they watched the black-and-white image, she closed her eyes, and the fire remained under control.
She whispered a word, stood still for a long while, then seemed to freak out over something, running back into the bedroom to dress.
“What’d she say?” Ladon muttered.
“Wolves,” Brand muttered through grimly set lips. “I knew that fucking wolf shifter said more to her than she let on.”
He could practically feel Ladon’s speculative gaze burning a hole into the back of his head. “You think she’s running from you?”
Asshole. “Given the crying? I’d say that’s a fair bet.”
As soon as she’d dressed, she ran for the tunnel, trying to leave, only to be stopped by Maul. She and the hound engaged in an argument, but what caught Brand’s attention was when she said, “Dragons are about to come down on top of a group of wolf shifters. I have to warn them.”
She’s not running from me. A small trickle of relief dropped into the pit that had taken up residence in his stomach. Dammit, she’s running to where dragons are headed.
“That girl has a bleeding heart,” Ladon snarled.
“Or a death wish,” Brand tacked on.
“Wait, back it up. I think she just said where she’s headed.”
Brand fiddled with the controls on the screen.
As soon as she repeated the location, Brand started moving. “I know that town.”
Then her other words sank in. Uther. He pulled up and turned to Ladon, who took a step back with a scowl. “What?”
