She shoved that thought out of her head. It had no place in her mind, or in her heart. Not when the dream she had experienced had felt more real than ever.
More dangerous than ever.
The elf male had slept in time with her and that vision had been a strange reality, shared between them as if they had been together, not countless leagues apart in separate beds. Each touch, sound, taste, sight and emotion had flowed through her, wrapped around her and left her lost in the male, in the passion and desire, and the sweet high of a coming together that had burned her to ashes.
She had often wondered how it would feel if they slept at the same time, sharing a vision, but she had never imagined that wild and frenzied need, that heat and hunger, and the sheer bliss she had experienced.
Bliss that had her quivering still, bone-deep satisfied.
Gods, dear gods, if the male could make being with him that intoxicating and powerful in her dreams, what could he do in reality?
It didn’t bear thinking about.
She wasn’t sure she would survive it.
She tried to divert the course of her thoughts away from the elf male and back to her brother, but the damned male refused to leave her and her mind kept conjuring images from her dream, visions of them naked and tangled together, lost in the throes of passion. She closed her eyes and gave herself over to those images, imagining him stroking his fingers over her bare skin, teasing her senses with the light caress. Her fingers trailed where his would, caressing over her right breast to catch her pebbled nipple before he dropped lower, sweeping his touch over the flare of her hip, torturing her with the anticipation of where he would head next.
Taryn bit her lip and skimmed her hand down the flat of her belly.
A feral growl rumbled through the castle and her hand stilled, her heart leaping into her throat as she swung her gaze towards the wooden door of her apartment.
Her brother had returned.
She swallowed hard, trying to get her heart back down into her chest, and used her limited magic to call her clothes, dressing in a pair of violet leathers and a cream corset. Fury flowed through the building, reaching under her door to caress around her ankles before swirling upwards to encompass her. Her brother was angry about something.
She rushed to the door, yanked it open and hurried barefoot down the corridor, the black stone cool beneath her bare feet. Her violet-to-white hair bounced across her bare shoulders with each stride and her eyes charted the course ahead of her as she increased her speed, concerned her brother was angry with her.
Or worse.
What if the elf male had been closer than she had thought?
Gods help him if he had been caught by Tenak.
When trying to hide the sword, Taryn had seen the cells in the dungeon of the castle, had scented the dried blood on the flagstones that had been old, but not old enough.
Her brother didn’t only kill trespassers who entered his valley. Sometimes, he did far worse.
A female scream reached her ears and she skidded to a halt at the top of the grand staircase in the vestibule, legs trembling and heart racing as she smelled blood.
She shook her head, feet frozen to the spot even as a small courageous part of her said to intervene and stop whatever madness her brother was inflicting on the innocent female.
The greater part of herself was already too far gone, plunging deep into her memories, pulling up the darkness from the depth of her soul and throwing the black veil over her. Her knees struck the smooth stone, her breath leaving her in a rush as those memories swallowed her and the darkness held her in a grip so fierce she couldn’t breathe.
Could only feel.
Cold hands on her skin. Hot breath on her neck.
Words whispered in her ear, a threat meant to stir fear that would weaken her, allowing the male to break her.
Taryn clawed at her hair and then at the male, shoving him away, fighting him as he tried to force himself on her. She raked talons over his flesh, scoring deep and spilling blood. Dug them into his skin until they hit bone and snarled through sharp teeth at him, snapping and growling, determined to take a chunk out of his neck and end him.
Strong hands clasped her upper arms, pinning them against her chest, and then she was on her back, those same hands pressing down hard on her shoulders.
Her dragon instincts roared to life and she lashed out, kicking and clawing, shrieking at the male as the transformation coursed through her. The collar around her neck didn’t stop it this time. She roared as her form shifted, bones growing and scales rippling over her skin, and threw her head back as wings sprouted from her back, stretching wide to span the entrance hall. Her front paws hit the floor of the vestibule, one back leg remaining on the upper level and one on the staircase.
“Taryn.”
That word was a blur in her ears, unfamiliar and strange, even when a dim part of her thought she should know it.
She knew nothing but fury, pain and rage, and a hunger to kill.
She reared back and lowered her gaze to the one who had spoken.
A male.
Her jowls peeled back off her fangs as she growled at him, her eyes narrowing and focus sharpening on the male. Blood pumped from deep gashes in his left side, coursing over his bare skin, seeping into the waist of his purple leathers. Blood that coated her claws too.
She raked her eyes over him, snarled when she saw the ties of his trousers were open.
He meant to break her.
She swept her paw down, slammed it into the male and sent him flying across the room. He grunted as he hit the wall, the sound satisfying but not enough, a mere hit of pleasure that birthed a hunger for another taste. She dropped to all four paws in the cramped space, twisted her body so she could reach the male, and lashed out at him again.
He leaped, springing high into the air, and she snarled as he landed on her paw as it struck the ground where he had been.
Infuriating male.
“Taryn!”
That word again. This time, it gave her pause, sparking a strange sensation within her.
She shook it away and lashed out again, sweeping her other paw around to catch the male. He growled as he twisted through the air, spinning, limbs flying in all directions, and barked out a delicious cry as he hit the wall above the arched entrance and then slammed into the floor.
She turned to strike him again and fell to her right, the awkward angle of having her hind legs at the top of the staircase tipping her off balance. She crashed hard into the wall, whimpered as her right wing bent back, and flinched as her jaw cracked on the floor and the banister of the staircase jabbed into her ribs.
The male picked himself up and she snorted as he approached her, a soft look on his bloodied face.
He rubbed his right hand across his chest, smearing it with his blood, and held it out to her. “Taryn, stop this.”
She snorted again and stilled as she caught the scent of his blood. Warmth flowed through her, a sensation that drove out the fear and left her sinking against the black wall and floor, her strength draining from her.
As it rushed out of her, she couldn’t hold her dragon form and the world around her dulled as she shifted, her wings and tail disappearing and horns shrinking into her skin and scales sinking back into her flesh.
She breathed hard as she lay on her side, awareness slowly dawning, clearing the haze from her mind. Her eyes gradually widened and she looked at her brother, found him standing a short distance from her, holding his injured arm to his side.
The tender edge to his violet-to-white eyes didn’t soothe her this time, couldn’t steal away the pain and the anger.
He stooped to help her and she shoved him back and clothed herself before pushing onto her feet. She glared at him, fire burning through her blood, rage that she knew would blaze forever in her. Six masters. Three hundred years. A thousand lifetimes of pain and suffering. Nothing could erase that from her past.
No one could fix what had be
en broken.
“Taryn,” Tenak started and she turned on him with a black snarl, flashing her sharp teeth at him and warning him to keep his distance. He backed off a step and lowered his hand to his side, but the hurt in his eyes wasn’t enough to make her forgive him or desire to speak with him, not when he smelled of fae blood and sex.
“Never… never bring a female into this castle again,” she snarled and advanced on him, her chest heaving against her leather corset as the fury in her veins reached boiling point. “I will kill you next time.”
His eyes widened and then narrowed, darkness clouding them as his fingers curled into fists at his sides. If he tried to fight her, he would learn what three centuries of Hell had taught her.
How to kill without remorse.
How to survive.
He drew down a deep breath but she didn’t relax, not even when his hands uncurled and his shoulders sagged, his stance shifting to a non-threatening one.
“I am sorry,” he said but the apology wasn’t enough.
Nothing he could say would be enough. All males like him deserved to die. Whatever doubts she had been having about her mission, he had snuffed them all out of existence, leaving her conscience clear and heart strong, determined to carry out her plan. He reached for her again and she glared at the hand he offered, one that had no doubt held the female in place or covered her mouth to stifle her screams.
Taryn snarled at it.
“Speak to me, Sister.” He wisely withdrew his hand. “Tell me what happened to you.”
She lifted her eyes to lock with his and growled the words she had long ago sworn to herself, when she had come close to surrendering, so tired from the constant fight against her captors, her spirit on the verge of breaking. A moment of weakness that she had to live with together with three hundred years of shame.
“Never… I will never speak of it to anyone.”
Because no one would love her if they knew.
CHAPTER 13
In terms of epiphanies, this was a major fucking one.
Bleu stared at the white table top in the break room of the nightclub, heart banging around in his chest as everything crashed over him. He felt Iolanthe’s gaze on him, questioning him, and sensed her concern, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at her and couldn’t find his voice to speak and tell her that he was fine.
Would be fine once his entire world stopped rocking and tilting anyway.
He had never been the sort to feel lonely and had long ago given up on his dream of finding his fated female. He had been fine with his life as a bachelor, married to his work with Loren and the kingdom.
He had been lying to himself.
He had been filling his life with work and shallow fleeting relationships because he had been covering the truth, unable to face it because he knew it would change his world and nothing he did would stop that from happening.
When he had seen his friends finding their fated ones and falling in love as they set out on a new path with their mate at their side, he had avoided them because he had been subconsciously trying to avoid the truth.
A truth he had been avoiding for the past seven centuries.
The dragon was his fated one.
He had known it the moment he had first tangled with her on the battlefield in the elf kingdom, shortly after she had stolen the sword, and the knowledge of what she was to him and to his kingdom, had torn him in two directions. She was both his ki’ara and the sworn enemy of his species.
In response to that knowledge, he had done what he did best. He had hurled himself into his position in the army and his work in order to avoid looking too closely at the recognition that had sparked to life inside him that day. He had shoved it to the back of his mind and had been so persistent in his desire to forget it, that he had somehow managed it.
Centuries later, he had forgotten he had even found his mate, had merely believed that he had decided to set aside that dream he had always told Iolanthe about.
Gods, it had been there in the back of his mind, locked deep in his heart all along though. A soul-deep awareness that he couldn’t have his mate that had coloured everything in his life, making him view them as a nuisance and then making him jealous when he had seen others find theirs, able to start a life together with them.
One he could never have with his female.
He had buried himself in work because he couldn’t have her. He had condemned himself to a life alone, one cold and devoid of love and light.
He hadn’t even tried.
He had been a fucking idiot.
He groaned and tipped his head back, stared at the slightly grubby white tiled ceiling of the break room. Loren had told him once, several thousand years ago, that with age came wisdom. He wasn’t sure that was the case for him. Seven centuries ago he had been old enough that he should have recognised the dragon female as his mate, his dream come true, and he should have done something.
He shouldn’t have given up on her so easily.
His kingdom and his position meant something to him, but was it worthy of the sacrifice he had made?
He had changed himself, discarded the male who had always dreamed of finding his mate and had denied his true nature.
Seeing how fiercely Loren had fought for Olivia, and Kyter for Iolanthe, and even damned Thorne for Sable, had set him on edge for some reason, and at the time he hadn’t been able to name it, but now he could.
It had made him angry.
With himself.
Every male he knew had fought to claim his mate, and he had fought to forget his.
He wasn’t sure what kind of male that made him, but he didn’t like it and it was time he changed.
Well, it was time he changed back.
He could no longer deny his true nature.
He couldn’t bring himself to believe that there was a chance for him and the female, but he could finally see that it was a possibility. Nothing was impossible after all. He had proven that countless times and he should have tried to prove it with her too.
He had been wrong to believe that everyone but him was finding their mate.
His was out there. Waiting.
Running from him.
Gods, the thought of having her set his blood on fire but chilled him at the same time. He wasn’t really sure of himself now or what the future held for him. Everything that had happened in the past few months had tipped him off balance, but he wasn’t going to just give up and throw in the towel. He was going to figure everything out and come up with a strategy, one that would bring him and the female dragon together and give him a chance to speak with her.
It would be difficult now that he had brought Leif, Dacian and Fynn in on the hunt for her.
He cursed the gods. The trio would want to pursue the original plan of reclaiming the sword and they wouldn’t care whether the culprit was caught or killed in the process. He couldn’t even tell them that Loren had issued an order to capture the dragon, because their prince had issued the exact opposite.
In writing.
He cursed Loren this time. The male was only doing his duty, but Bleu wished he hadn’t followed it to the letter this time. Normally, Loren allowed teams out on special missions without a written warrant. Maybe Bleu should have cursed the council. It was their constant bickering with Loren and pressuring him to stick firmly to the rules in order to placate them and restore some balance between him and the elders that had no doubt made Loren bother to issue his team mission orders in a formal manner.
Bleu groaned.
He wasn’t even sure whether attempting to speak with the female was the right course of action. She had attacked his people, had killed thousands of his kin, and had stolen the most precious treasure of his prince. He knew that to be true, even when there was a piece of him that wanted to believe it wasn’t. He had seen the sword on her person when he had first met her and there was no denying that, not even when it pained him to accept it.
His fated female was the enem
y of his people.
His enemy.
“Brother,” Iolanthe whispered softly and his groan deepened as he remembered that he wasn’t alone.
He dragged a hand over his face and sat up, found her watching him closely with an edge of concern in her eyes.
“I’m just tired.” Another lie. He really had to stop lying to his sister, but it was easier than spilling the truth—his fated female was a murderer and he had orders to kill her.
“It is the dragon, is it not? The mission plays on your mind and weighs on your heart for some reason.”
Bleu gazed off to his right, to the door there, and sighed. “A little… but it is nothing for you to worry about.”
Her eyes didn’t leave him and he knew she wanted to say that she couldn’t simply stop worrying about him. She didn’t need to tell him. He shifted his gaze to her and held it, silently letting her know that. The bane of being a sibling, he supposed. One was always worried about the other for some reason.
“You could help me,” he said and she perked up, sitting straighter in her chair, her violet eyes bright with enthusiasm that he scowled at because he knew the source of it. “I’m not asking you to come with me.”
She huffed, her fine eyebrows knitting together and lips flattening into a mulish line as she folded her arms across her chest.
“Gods, you two look frighteningly alike sometimes.” Kyter strolled into the break room, the overlong grey sweats he wore swishing around his bare feet, and yawned fiercely, his face screwing up as he flashed short fangs. He shuffled towards the counter in the kitchen area, scrubbing a hand over his mussed sandy hair. “I need coffee. Coffee… coffee… sweet coffee.”
He opened the cupboard on the wall above the coffee pot and fumbled with a blue mug, barely catching it before it hit the dark counter, and set it down as he yawned again.
“Did we wake you?” Iolanthe said as she turned in her chair to look at Kyter, all sweetness and light now her mate was around.
The transformation was startling, but impressive. Bleu had never noticed the true depth of the effect Kyter had on her mood, but he couldn’t fail to see it now. She had gone from irritated and grumpy to bright smiles in a heartbeat, her cheeks flushed with heat and eyes sparkling.
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