Pain shot through him, hot and fierce, tearing his heart asunder and pulling the floor out from under his feet. His knees hit the pale polished flagstones and he bent over, pressing his palms into the cold stone and panting hard. The fire came again, licking at his bones, searing his flesh, and he cried out.
A mighty roar echoed along the corridor at his back.
A chill swept over his skin.
Taryn.
Bleu exploded to his feet and teleported to the main portal of the castle where he had left her.
She was gone.
His heart pounded, her fear colliding with his as he scoured the courtyard for her. Only elves as far as his eyes could see and he wanted to grab every single one of them and rattle them until they confessed her location.
He tried to focus on her blood in his body, but it was hard when every instinct he possessed was screaming at him to find his female. She was afraid. Terrified. In pain.
Suffering.
He snarled when he got a fix on her location and his gaze snapped towards the gate in the inner wall of the castle grounds, settling on the garrison on the other side.
Damn them.
He would kill them all.
He sprinted towards the square three storey stone building, moving in a blur as his bare feet chewed up the distance between him and his female. He issued the mental command to his armour as he ran and growled when it didn’t come. Fuck. He had forgotten the bastard dragon had stolen it from him.
He shouldered the main door open, sharp pain splintering across his bones, and ignored the comments some of the soldiers tossed in his direction as he ran towards the steps that led down off to his right. He leaped the first set, landing in the turning, and then leaped down the second, his feet striking the cobbled floor of the cellblock hard enough to get the attention of everyone crowding the corridor between the cells.
A flicker of regret shone in Dacian’s eyes, but that wasn’t going to stop Bleu from butchering him later.
He had trusted Dacian with his female and the warrior had failed him.
He pinned everyone present with murderous looks, barely holding back the surging tide of darkness, the hunger to do more than glare. He wanted to sink his claws into their flesh and tear them apart for what they had done.
As casually as he could when his blood was thundering with a need to kill and Taryn’s fear flowed through him, he walked forwards, chin tipped up and shoulders back. The urge to run to her cell battered him but he somehow managed to reach the group of males without surrendering to it.
They parted for him and he ground his teeth together, his fangs cutting into his gums when he saw Taryn huddled in the corner of the cell.
Bleu turned on his team. “What the hell do you think you are doing?”
“Following protocol.” Leif’s calm tone only made Bleu bump him to the top of the list. He would be the first Bleu would make acquainted with his claws once he had procured new armour. “She had to be placed somewhere secure while you spoke with Prince Loren.”
Bleu curled his fingers into fists and reined in his fury. It instantly slipped its leash again and he had to dig his short nails into his palm to stop himself from lashing out at Leif.
“I cannot argue that it was not the right course of action, but who gave you permission to hurt her?” He flung one hand towards her, pointing at her where she sat curled into a ball, rocking and muttering to herself.
Her pain was crushing, far worse than he had felt in her back in the cell of the dragon castle when he had bitten her. It pressed down on his heart, left him feeling as if it might crush it entirely, until nothing remained and all he knew was agony for eternity.
“No one hurt her,” Leif countered. “We brought her down here and she turned crazed.”
Liar.
He looked across at his little female as she stared at the opposite corner of her cell, eyes dull and lifeless as she chanted to herself in the dragon tongue.
“He is coming for me… he is coming for us all… he is coming for me… he is coming,” she whispered as she rocked, arms wrapped tightly around her leather-clad knees.
Bleu slowly frowned as he realised that the only wounds she bore were the ones he had given her. Leif hadn’t lied.
“Unlock the door,” Bleu said and no one moved to obey him.
He growled at them, snarling through his fangs as his pointed ears flared back against the sides of his head.
“Need to fly,” Taryn muttered in the dragon tongue and her pain worsened, near crippling him as it ripped into his heart.
He had to calm her. He couldn’t deny that urge even when he knew that doing so would raise questions in his men and possibly suspicions too. He didn’t care. His female was in pain. She was afraid. Suffering. He had to do something to take away her fear and hurt and soothe her.
He snatched the keys from the hands of the male in charge and fumbled with them, his hands shaking as he rushed to find the one that would open her door.
“Need to fly,” she whimpered and began clawing at her hair, raking blunt nails over her skin and leaving red marks in their wake.
“Taryn,” Bleu said as he found the right key and shoved it into the lock. He growled as his hands shook so violently he almost knocked the damn key back out again and finally managed to turn it.
He shoved the door open.
Her eyes snapped up to him.
Bright and clear.
She launched to her feet with a growl, barrelled into his chest and sent him staggering back into the men behind him, knocking them all down. Her booted foot pressed into his stomach and she kicked off, breaking to her left.
Running for the courtyard.
“Taryn!” Bleu scrambled onto his feet and stumbled over the fallen males who were trying to get up too. He growled at them and broke free, bare feet hitting the cobbles as Taryn reached the first bend in the stone staircase. “Taryn!”
She didn’t slow. She didn’t even look at him.
Her eyes remained locked ahead of her, up the stairs.
Gods damn it.
The whole courtyard was filled with soldiers and if they saw her fleeing the garrison they would try to stop her, and he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from attacking them.
He sprinted up the stairs and rushed out into the daylight, eyes watering at the sudden change in brightness. When his vision recovered, he scanned the outer courtyard for her, and then whipped his head towards the arched entrance to the inner courtyard to his left when shouts came from that direction.
A roar sounded and he growled as her head appeared above the top of the wall, white horns brushing the violet scales of her neck as she reared back, standing over sixty foot tall in her dragon form. Arrows flew at her, bouncing off the white plates across her chest.
He snarled and teleported, landing in the centre of the orchard, facing a small army of archers.
Bleu spun on his heel to face the other direction and Taryn loomed over him, her huge front paws swiping at the arrows zipping towards her. One struck her face and she flinched, enormous right eye closing as she tried to protect her sight.
A thin line of red blossomed along the path the arrow had taken, from her lip up to the top of her snout.
He growled and turned on the archers. “Stand down!”
They all looked at him as if he had gone mad, and maybe he had. Maybe he had been mad from the moment he met her, crazy to deny that she was his fated one.
His ki’ara.
His everything.
Her broad wings beat the air, their white membrane stretched taut as she spread them, easily spanning the breadth of the courtyard from the interior wall on her right to the castle on her left.
She kicked off, shaking the ground and sending a few of the soldiers around him to their knees. Her wings beat harder, sending a gust of wind that drove more men onto their backsides, and she lifted into the air.
“Wait!” Bleu hollered and waved his arms.
She turned
wild eyes on him and he knew in that instant that she wouldn’t listen. Whatever madness had gripped her, it was too powerful for her to break free of its hold.
He turned as she flew overhead, leaving him as the only male standing, and he could feel her joy as it ran through him, the deep relief she felt as she flew, spreading her wings. Her fear remained though, lingering in his blood, and he couldn’t stop thinking about what she had said.
He was coming.
Had it been a vision?
Had she seen her brother coming for her?
For them all?
It had clearly shaken her and he needed to follow her, not only to comfort her. As powerful as that need was, the other that ruled him was equal in strength to it.
He needed to find out what she had seen because he had the feeling that the kingdom was in danger and it was his fault.
He had gone against her wishes and brought her here rather than to the dragon realm, and in doing so, he had turned her brother’s focus to this realm and his kin once more. He had given an unbalanced warrior a reason to believe he had kidnapped his sister in order to harm her.
And that warrior had a sword that could cut an entire legion of elves down in one swing.
“Pursue the dragon,” Leif shouted, snapping him out of his thoughts.
Soldiers were already forming groups.
Hunting parties.
“Belay that order,” Bleu barked and everyone stopped to look at him. “I will go alone.”
He teleported before anyone could respond, but in the heartbeat of time between willing his portal and disappearing, he felt the presence of Loren.
Bleu reappeared on the brow of a hill a short distance from the castle and looked back at it, the wind that always raced over the green plains tousling his hair and caressing his bare torso.
Loren had witnessed everything.
He was going to have to answer some tricky, personal, questions when he returned.
He didn’t care.
Maybe he would have once, only a few days ago, but now all he cared about was Taryn. Loren could punish him, could question him in front of every soldier in the castle, could strip him of his rank for insubordination and the fact he had endangered everyone in the elf kingdom. He didn’t care what happened to him.
He only cared what happened to Taryn.
She was the only thing that mattered now.
CHAPTER 24
Bleu scoured the lands around him. Villages dotted the rolling green hills, marked by the windmills and golden fields of grains that often surrounded them. Taryn would avoid those and any hint of civilisation. He looked over his right shoulder, in the direction of the First Realm of the demons, towards the stronghold. He doubted she would return to the dragon realm and her brother, but he couldn’t be sure.
He scanned back around, sweeping his gaze over all the lands to his right and then settling them on the mountain range that separated the elf kingdom from the free realm and the others.
Would she have kept flying straight and true, towards those mountains, or would she have swept around to head back towards Tenak?
He couldn’t see her in any direction. Not a single sign of her. He would find her though.
He couldn’t let her disappear from his life again, and he wouldn’t leave her out there to go through whatever was hurting her alone, not when he knew he could help her.
Bleu closed his eyes and focused on his blood and their incomplete bond.
He turned his thoughts inwards at first, seeking the thread that connected them, and seized hold of it. The slender ribbon of red shimmered in the darkness of his mind and he focused on it, using his psychic abilities to enhance and strengthen it until it glowed. He wavered on his feet, strength draining from him, but he pushed onwards, pouring all of his energy and his power into locating her.
The darkness faded, hazy black rock replacing it, cragged and grim. He frowned and pushed harder, forcing the images to focus so he could discern where she was. Long minutes passed, a tiny span of time in the life of an elf but one that felt like an eternity to him. He needed to find her.
He needed to be with her.
The image came into sharp relief.
A cave.
He clung to that image and teleported, willing himself to go to that location. The darkness swallowed him and when it parted, the cold that had engulfed him didn’t go away. Frigid wind battered him, scouring his bare torso with icy fingers, stealing all heat from him. He shivered and wrapped his arms around himself, and scanned his surroundings. The cragged black rock dropped sharply below him, plummeting into a valley before it rose up again into another sharp peak. Similar mountain ranges filled the distance as far as he could see.
The western border of the elf kingdom.
This was no place for his female.
This patch of no man’s land between the elf kingdom and the realms beyond was dangerous, the battles between the fallen angels and gods that took place in those lands often spilling over into it. He needed to get Taryn away from this place.
He looked across to his right as wind whistled past him, the wailing noise created by the cave mouth there. Taryn’s fear continued to flow through his blood, stronger now that she was close to him again. His little dragon had been afraid and her instincts had driven her to find a cave, a place where she could hide.
He curled his hands into fists at his sides, turned on his heel and strode towards the isolated cave.
He wasn’t sure what to expect as he stooped and entered the cave, his eyes adjusting to the near-darkness, but seeing Taryn huddled naked in the corner, holding herself and rocking, hit him square in the chest.
In the heart.
Bleu couldn’t stop his feet from carrying him to her or his instincts as her male from teleporting a blanket from his quarters and into his hand, together with a small battery-operated lantern. He twisted the top to turn it on and pale light chased back the darkness.
Taryn looked up at him through the tangled strands of her violet-to-white hair, her eyes bloodshot and wide, tears streaking her cheeks together with a smear of blood that darted upwards from the right side of her mouth, and his heart ached behind his breast.
She tensed when he stopped in front of her.
He slowly crouched before her, set the lantern down and carefully placed the blanket around her shoulders.
“What is wrong?” he whispered in her tongue, his voice as soft as he could manage when part of him was filled with fury, with a dark hunger to seek out whoever had harmed her and make them suffer as she did.
He focused on tending to her instead, using it to keep that hunger under control. She was all that mattered right now.
He drew the blanket closed around her while he waited for her to become accustomed to his presence and find her voice. When she didn’t speak, he carefully combed her hair with his fingers, removing the crusted blood.
Blood that was his fault.
He had hurt his mate and he had to live with that, but he didn’t have to let her suffer now, when he had the power to help her.
Heal her.
Since the dark moment forty-two centuries ago when Vail and Fuery had shattered his world, he had built a wall around his heart, determined to never allow anyone into it again. He had refused to feel deeply for anyone. He had kept them all at arm’s length so he wouldn’t be hurt again. He had purged all weakness because he had wanted to be strong.
Invulnerable.
He had done his best to guard himself and his heart, and it had worked for so long.
Or so he had thought.
When he had seen Taryn again and as he looked at her now, he realised that he hadn’t been invulnerable.
He had only been in denial.
He had carried pain for four thousand years, letting it fester in his heart, and those open sores had allowed darkness to grow inside him. That darkness made him more vulnerable and weaker than ever, susceptible to it.
He had refused to deal with what
had happened to him, had convinced himself that it hadn’t hurt him or affected him in any way, and now it might ruin him.
He could feel the darkness inside him, a terrible living thing that Tenak had set free and that he was still struggling to control even now.
Taryn’s eyes locked with his, soft and tender despite the hurt he could sense in her, the fear and the despair, and gently cast the shadows from his heart, expelling them and cleansing him.
If anyone in this world could help him come to terms with his emotions and the things that had happened in his past, it was her.
It had always been her.
She had held back the darkness inside him from the moment he had met her. He knew that now as he looked down at her, his fingers tangled in her hair, feeling her warmth on his skin. She had given him purpose, and he had mistaken it for a mission, conditioning himself to view her as nothing more than an enemy because he had been too afraid to risk his heart.
He wasn’t afraid anymore.
This feeling inside him wasn’t a weakness. It didn’t make him vulnerable.
It made him strong.
He was falling in love with her, with his mate, and he would do whatever it took to make her fall in love with him too. He would do whatever it took to make her see that he could be a good male, the right male for her, if she would give him a chance.
That he cared about her above everything else and would never let anything happen to her. He would protect her, cherish her, would love her forever if she let him.
He brought his fingers closer to her cheek and frowned as he felt her trembling. His little dragon was suffering and he would do for her what he knew she could do for him.
He would do his best to take away that pain by helping her come to terms with her emotions and her past.
“He is coming,” she murmured and began rocking, eyes darting beyond him to the cave mouth and back again.
Bleu nodded and kneeled in front of her. She caught the edges of the thick black wool blanket and tugged it closed, clutching it so tightly her fingers paled.
“You saw him in a vision?” he said in a low voice, the most soothing one he could manage. At least he hoped it was soothing. He didn’t have much experience with this sort of thing. He wasn’t sure he had ever taken care of anyone. Not like this. Not even his little sister.
Possessed by a Dark Warrior Page 23
