Dragon Mated: Sexy Urban Fantasy Romance (Prince of the Other Worlds Book 4)

by Kara Lockharte

  “Andi,” he said softly, catching her hands in his own, pulling them down. “What’s going on?”

  “My uncle wants to kill you,” she said simply, letting herself feel solace in his touch for one-one-thousand before twisting her wrists away. “And if I lead him to you—if I were the reason you died—that would break me.”

  He looked bemused, and then he had the gall to laugh. “Princess, your protectiveness is charming. But people have been trying to kill me since I was ten. I can handle it. Your uncle doesn’t frighten me.”

  That was when she knew she’d made the right choice, that as painful as this was, it was worthwhile. “He should, Damian,” she whispered, sinking in on herself. “But…you’re never going to take him seriously with me around. Or…worse yet…you’ll freeze up at some important moment, wondering about how I’ll feel when you have to fight him…or my brother…and then, where will I be?”

  “You’ll be mine,” he growled, grabbing her shoulders to straighten them.

  “Not if you’re dead. And if you’re dead because of me….” she swallowed, unable to finish the sentence.

  He advanced on her half a step, his golden eyes serious. “And if I’m not? If I win?”

  “By murdering them?” she asked, her voice rising, watching the realization hit him as her words did. “I don’t know, Damian. I can’t promise how I’ll feel.” Her throat felt like it was closing up at the thought of it—in panic. She’d already lost her mother. Did she really have to lose Danny, too? By Damian’s hand? She choked back another sob at the sheer awfulness of it. “It can be the right thing to do and still hurt me. Maybe that makes me weak, and maybe I’m running away too, but that’s why this has to end.”

  “End?” he repeated, and she wasn’t sure if he was arguing with her or just hypnotized by the word. “What do you mean, end?”

  She stepped back, leaving his hands empty and tried to catch her breath. “I mean, we need to stop seeing each other. From this moment on.” She watched each word land on him like a physical blow.

  “Impossible,” he said. He shook his head quickly, as if he could disbelieve this entire moment out of existence.

  “Not really,” she said softly. “Because it takes two people to be in a relationship, Damian. And I don’t want to be in this one anymore. It’s too hard. Too…terrible.” She forced herself to watch the effect her words had on him—she owed him that much—and he might not believe her if she let herself look away. A beautiful blaze of anger and confusion streaked across him like a comet, and then… Andi had seen a lot of people die at the hospital but she’d never seen anyone die outside of it until tonight. First the Hunter by her uncle’s hand, and now, Damian, by hers.

  She hadn’t even had to stab him.

  “Until when?” he demanded, his voice hoarse.

  “I don’t know.” She bit her lips. There’d been a lot of Hunters in the room along with her uncle. And all of them knew she knew a dragon now, and the fight between Damian and Danny was clearly coming. “Maybe never.” She closed her eyes so she wouldn’t cry more, but it didn’t work. The tears wouldn’t stop, and it felt like there was something small and rabid clawing her heart out of her chest. “This was never going to work, Damian. We’re from two different worlds…literally.” She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes and tried not to sob, and when she opened them again her image of him was shattered by the teardrops in her eyelashes, like watching him through a broken mirror.

  “Andi…we’re meant to be together,” he panted in front of her, eyes wild, hands clenching in and out of helpless fists. “It’s destiny—”

  “No!” she shouted, startling him to silence. “I’m so sick of that word, Damian! You’re not the boss of me, and neither is my uncle!” She sidestepped him so that the sky was at her back. “I make my own decisions! And right now? I want to go home.”

  He stepped toward her again, his golden eyes searching hers for any hint of kindness. “Princess, why don’t you have faith in us? In me?” He sounded so wounded and everything inside her wanted to break and run to his side. She wanted to let him hold her, let him play his hands against her body, feel him move inside of her again, and above all else, to tell her everything was going to be fine.

  But it would be a lie, wouldn’t it? Because there was no way he could make her any promises right now. Nothing he could say would be true.

  “Damian, I do. But I’m not so naive as to not have faith in my uncle also. I’ve known him too long for that.” She took a step back from him and it felt like the first step of the rest of her life. “Please, don’t make me repeat myself again.”

  He waited for a long moment, and then snapped his fingers twice. The magic cat appeared and took their current situation in with a curious yowl.

  “I need a mirror, Grim,” Damian told it.

  The cat fell back on its haunches, looked at her, then started complaining to Damian.

  “Grim, now!” Damian demanded.

  The small cat made a frustrated sound, but a mirror arrived from nowhere to hover in the air between them. Andi walked around it to be on Damian’s side so they both showed in its reflection. He waved his hand in front of it and the image of her bathroom showed on the glass.

  “This isn’t what I want, Andi,” he said, offering his hand out. She knew she’d have to take it to make the journey. She carefully put her hand in his and felt his strong fingers wrap around hers.

  “It’s a good thing I’m not asking you then,” she said, raising her chin high. She felt his pain radiating off of him in waves.

  “Andi—”

  “Take me home.”

  His hand squeezed hers tightly as he stared at her, swallowing again. “Don’t let go,” he warned, and she heard all the ways he meant it as he stepped into the reflection.

  Andi stepped in after him. This time, she wasn’t protected by the heat from his body—not like she’d been when they’d stepped into the pond at the cemetery. The freezing unhappiness of the horrible between-place assaulted her everywhere and she bit her lips not to scream because she didn’t want Damian to overreact—and she didn’t want to let any of the tiny cold hands touching her to reach inside her mouth. It was bad enough she had to breathe still, and she didn’t want to open her eyes. There was a crashing sound as both she and Damian arrived on her bathroom counter. He’d managed to make a much more graceful landing, lightly hopping down to stand on the tile, whereas when she opened her eyes she found herself sitting amongst the hair products and makeup she’d used earlier and left out.

  He was still holding her hand. She let him help her dismount the counter, to stand closer to the door, and it was clear he wasn’t going to let go first.

  “Andi,” he tried her name again, his voice a symphony of tones imploring her to reconsider.

  “Don’t,” she told him, letting go of his hand. His hand fell from hers much more slowly. Andi took one last long look at him, before opening her bedroom door and pausing. “Why were you mad at yourself earlier?” She knew she was going to regret asking, but she couldn’t help it.

  He closed his eyes before responding. “It doesn’t matter anymore, princess, does it?”

  She shook her head. “No, I guess not. Good-bye, dragon.”

  The second the door was closed behind her she leaned on it, slid to the ground, and cried.

  Andi stayed in a ball inside her bedroom quietly sobbing. She didn’t want to wake Sammy up. It was late, and there was nothing Sammy could do about it besides. No one else in the world would understand what this was like, being torn between the man she loved and her family. She’d never condone anything her uncle or her brother did, but Danny had sounded so sure about her destiny, and she’d be damned if she was somehow Damian’s Achilles heel.

  She loved him too much for that.

  She loved him enough to hurt this badly.

  She put her hands over her mouth and sobbed on the floor until she couldn’t breathe, and then fished inside her nightstand f
or her bottle of Ambien. Just one ten milligram pill, nothing crazy, but she wanted to go straight to sleep. She prayed she wouldn’t dream; she just needed to not be here for a little bit. She swallowed it dry, its bitter taste suiting her mood, and then looked around her room and found herself surrounded by too many memories. Everything in it reminded her of him—or her family.

  She got up and started walking through her room—like if she weren’t touching something she’d collapse because it was true—taking inventory. Anything that reminded her of her heritage? She didn’t want to see it anymore. She threw the photo of her, Danny, and her mom from their trip to the zoo as kids into a desk drawer, facedown. All sorts of knickknacks and memories followed it: the teddy bear Danny’d given her—his Andi-bear—for Christmas when she was ten that they both knew her mom had picked out; the stuffed unicorn her uncle had given her—that she still had!—and when she was done, her desk and walls, and half her shelves were empty. The photo album that proved her mom was a Hunter? She spun it underneath her bed, where she’d never look at it again.

  And then anything that reminded her of Damian? She didn’t want to get rid of any of it, but seeing it now would only burn. She dumped one of her pillows out onto her bed and used the pillowcase, putting anything that reminded her of him into it: the empty French press she’d kept on her desk, the pajamas he’d given her, the sheets she’d washed and thrown into the back of her closet, and while she was there, she regretfully pulled the black silk dress she’d worn with him off its hanger, pouring the slippery fabric into the pillowcase before strangling it with a knot.

  The Ambien was hitting now; things were slowing down. She lunged for her full-length mirror and turned it around while she still had the sense to. It would be cheating if Damian got to peek, and she took down the Fast and Furious poster for good measure, because if Damian couldn’t see her then her Ambien addled brain said then no one could, not even Vin or The Rock. She held onto furniture now like it was a path, first the wall, then the nightstand, then crawled onto her bed, kicking off her shoes, curling back into a ball around a pillow, and that’s when it hit her.

  She’d really left him.

  She held her naked pillow to her mouth to muffle the sound of her screaming and felt her emotions wrack her body. Her heart clenched inside her chest, making her gasp for air, and she knew that that’s what people meant when they said they had a broken heart—it was all the adrenaline in your body flowing into your bloodstream, all your veins and arteries constricting, feeling like a heart attack. She wished that that were true. If there was something merely physically wrong with her, she could just call 911 and have someone else fix it, as opposed to the mess that’d happened just now.

  It was the right thing to do, but that didn’t mean it didn’t feel like dying.

  Damian waited inside Andi’s bathroom for as long as he could stand.

  Go to her, his dragon growled. They were listening to her sob on the door’s far side, and the air was thick with Andi’s scent, especially the ocean.

  We can’t. Not now.

  He put his hand on his side of her bathroom door and traced the path she’d taken down it, as he fell to kneel on her bathroom floor.

  His mate had pushed him away. Andi had had her reasons—good ones—but her absence left him reeling.

  She was the one, the only one, and now—he heard her manage to stand, moving around her room with little grace—she had abandoned him.

  No.

  It only felt like that.

  That’s not what she’d done.

  She wasn’t fighting him. She was fighting fate. And he remembered what that was like, when his father had died and he’d opted to not take his crown.

  Which had led to his own fate, brought low here, inside Andi’s bathroom. He wanted to tear down her apartment’s thin walls to get to her and claim her again while knowing that the best thing he could do for her was to leave here immediately.

  She was scared of her uncle and scared for him, and he was going to have to kill members of her family. On what obscene world could he expect to put their relationship through that and come out intact?

  She is ours, his dragon growled. He felt the beast’s claws flex inside him, looking to take his frustrations out on someone.

  Damian both knew she was…and wasn’t.

  She is hers, he corrected the beast.

  His dragon made an anguished sound. It didn’t care for semantics, and it started tearing into him as he stood quietly, letting it run amok inside of him, hurting them both in a way that Damian himself, always in control, was never allowed. He moved himself onto the bathroom counter and opened the mirror up before his resolve could break and he sent himself back to his castle, in a swirl of air scented like caramel, apples, and the saltwater of her tears.

  His dragon attacked him again, wordlessly, the moment he was free of the mirror, worse than it had ever been. You need to stop, he warned it.

  You need to let me win, the beast growled back.

  Damian clutched onto the side of the mirror he’d just exited, and Grimalkin appeared. “Well?” the cat demanded, tail straight as an exclamation point. “What happened? Where is she? And why was she crying?”

  “Not you, too,” Damian muttered. He put a hand to his chest and started staggering toward his bedroom door. It felt like his dragon was searching for his heart to shred.

  If I found it, I’d eat it, his dragon told him. But you have none, it snarled.

  He concentrated on making it to his hallway, keeping his hand along one wall. He ignored Grim’s ongoing questions for his dragon’s accusations. You think I am not in pain?

  We didn’t have to leave her! He felt the beast lurch inside him, trying to gain control and go back to his mirrors. He never should’ve let it out earlier this evening; he’d given it freedom it wouldn’t easily forget—like the feel of her soft weight, safe inside its paws…. You want it, too, his dragon hissed at him.

  It would be a lie to deny it. The thrill of her absolute trust in him, listening to her shriek with delight as his dragon flew her, the satisfaction of her finally knowing him in his entirety. Damian closed his eyes at the memory, taking his path by heart, one foot after another, in internal agony as his dragon attempted to rend him in two.

  The doors to the training room opened in front of him, and he felt safer the second they closed behind him again. Was his dragon stronger or was he just too tormented to control it? Did he even want control? His dragon wasn’t wrong; they did want the same thing. Andi, in their hands, paws, at their side, to be inside her—it was just that he knew it wasn’t possible.

  When would it be?

  “Damian?” Grimalkin appeared inside the room with him, prancing in concern. “Are you even listening?”

  “No,” Damian said, his voice low. “Hardest setting,” he announced, bracing for a barrage. The walls of the training room were mounted with weapons created from Grim’s magic and Jamison’s technological imagination, and he would welcome whatever attacked him with open arms.

  Grim waved away his command with a tail-stroke. “Damian, I asked you a question,” the cat snapped.

  Damian glared at his guardian. “Hardest setting! NOW!”

  Grimalkin glared back at him and disappeared, as fifty of the lasers Jamison had mounted into the walls dropped down from panels and began charging.

  You always try to drown me out with acts of physical performance, his dragon snarled.

  “That’s not why we’re here,” he answered the beast aloud.

  The first shot out and he dodged it without thinking, the red light clipping his suit’s shoulder, the scent of ozone mixed with vaporized wool smoking in the air. He twisted in time to miss another near his cheek, feeling its heat like a painful kiss.

  No? his dragon asked archly, sure it was catching him in a lie.

  “No,” he told it.

  The other forty-eight came online, aimed at him and he didn’t bother to try. Fifty pinpricks of pain, b
urning him on the outside, same as his dragon was ripping him apart in his mind. The air was full of the stench of his suit being burned off of him, and then past that, his own skin. He watched the spots where they hit him, as they coalesced on his chest, where it looked like he was exploding into light. He was magically enhanced, and he healed almost as fast as they harmed, but they were hurting him. They were smaller versions of the big gun that Jamison had made to kill him, if his dragon ever got free. It felt good to hurt. It felt good to feel—something, anything—that was not the sheer anguish in his heart. His dragon quieted inside of him as it realized what was going on, that he was just standing there, taking the blows.

  “I wanted to prove to you that I can bleed.”

  He felt the beast coil and writhe inside himself. So? it hissed. You think if you punish yourself, I will stop hurting you? It redoubled its efforts, raking him with its claws. I will never rest until I am with her again!

  Damian suffered unimaginable pain both inside and out. “And do you think that I will?” he shouted.

  It considered this, sensing the truth in him, then continued regardless. But you let her go!

  Damian brought his hands to his hair to tear at it, lasers following glittering paths up his arms. I had to! It was what she wanted! She’s scared—

  But she is our mate! his dragon howled, as if that alone could fix everything. She loved flying! Why is she scared? I don’t understand!

  Damian fell to his knees and felt the lasers dance a path down his back. He wanted to yell at the beast, but the torment it felt was only an echo of his own. He couldn’t blame it for not knowing what to do with its emotions when he could barely handle his. He ached indescribably inside and out and the scent of burning wool and cotton had shifted into the cooking scent of flesh. She feels trapped, dragon. Something that you should know all about.

  His dragon recoiled and Damian felt it thinking hard. Then I want to break her free.

  It sounded so mournful, so pained, and in that moment, they were almost the same creature again, because Damian wanted nothing more than that as well. To somehow untangle Andi from all her entrapments with her brother and her uncle—and to free himself from his life of being hunted and being haunted by his curse. Would that he could come to her as a man, just a man, and love her freely. Oh, dragon. As do I. He sobbed into his hands.