CHAPTER 33
Gods, her mate was beautiful.
Even more so now.
He stole her breath, robbing her awareness of the world with it, leaving her feeling dazed and in awe as she gazed upon him. Her incredible male.
Her tiny dragon.
Not so tiny anymore.
She flinched when he crashed into the side of the green hill, scuffing the grass and leaving a long muddy track in his wake as he slowly slid to a halt.
Beautiful but not entirely graceful.
Bleu pushed himself up, huge talons curling into the soft ground that gave beneath his weight, and shook his head, his six long black horns becoming a blur in the bright light.
He snorted, his jowls peeled back off twin rows of razor sharp white teeth, and then his huge violet eyes dropped to her where she stood a short distance away, sharpening as they focused and challenged her.
She didn’t dare let the laugh that had been bubbling up her throat slip free. She had made the mistake of laughing at him the first time he had crash landed a few hours ago and that had earned her more than just a growl or a scowl in her direction. He had come running at her, heavy footfalls shaking the ground, tipping her off balance. It had ended with her planted on her backside and her mate towering over her, his beaked snout close to her face.
Her heart had almost pounded right out of her chest.
Not wholly because of fear though.
Bleu’s display of dominance, strength and aggression had triggered her dragon instincts, leaving her a quivering mess, aching for her mate to shift back and kiss the breath from her.
She wasn’t sure he knew what he had done to her in that moment. How hot he had made her, igniting a wildfire in her veins.
Gods.
Just thinking about it had heat stirring in her blood again, her pulse accelerating and body coming alive, hungry for his touch.
Bleu’s huge violet eyes narrowed and he inhaled deeply, stilled and then his eyes widened, his elliptical pupils dilating, and the black spines down his neck and back rippled. He was aware of her need.
He turned towards her and the light reflected off his black scales, sending a blue shimmer across them. She had never seen any dragon like him. It was rare for one of her kind to have six horns, two sprouting from the ridges above his eyes, two from the crown of his head, and a further two from the back behind his ears. He was larger than most male dragons too, packed with sinewy muscle and a wingspan that dwarfed her own.
He lowered his enormous head, his long neck stretching as he stalked closer to her, the underside of his jaw held barely a few feet from the grass. His muscular shoulders worked with each slow step, his wings shifting restlessly and his long tail swishing side to side.
She raised her hand when he was close enough for her to touch him and rested her palm on his hard snout between his nostrils. He exhaled again and then sniffed, and canted his head.
“Shall I show you how it is done?” she said, voice a low murmur as she tried to wrestle her desire back under control and focus on their lesson.
It was hard when her body was still buzzing from the feel of his fangs in her flesh. He had bitten her wrist this time, insisting that he take blood from that spot, and it still throbbed madly, a constant reminder of where he had sunk his fangs into her. She had wanted him to bite her neck again but she hadn’t had the heart to push him, not when he had seemed on edge, his feelings relaying his nerves to her and also the lingering trace of guilt. That guilt was there whenever he gazed at her neck, and she wished she could find a way to help him move past what he had done to her. She had forgiven him, but he hadn’t forgiven himself.
“Controlling the shift is the easy part,” she continued and rubbed between his nostrils, smiling as his eyes fluttered closed. Her mate like that. “Learning to fly is something else, and you will have to learn to fight on the wing too.”
She had the feeling it wasn’t going to be easy for him. It had taken him a few attempts to shift into a dragon, and he had spent the past few hours lumbering around the valley, barely making it a few metres off the ground before he hit it again. Normally hard.
The valley was filled with the evidence of his failures, long dark scars that criss-crossed the perfect green grass, making it look as if a battle had taken place, not a simple flying lesson.
Bleu snarled and reared back, the suddenness of it startling her and causing her to stagger backwards, placing some distance between them. He threw his head to one side and then the other, a constant growl curling from between his clenched fangs. She gasped and held her hands up to him as immense pain ran through her. Pain that came from him.
“Bleu!” She reached for him but he stumbled away from her, his hind left leg gave out and he slammed onto his side, his head smacking hard off the hillside.
Taryn ran down the gentle slope to him and skidded to a halt as she realised what was happening.
He was shifting back, and by the looks of things, it wasn’t a controlled transformation. Something was wrong.
“Bleu,” she hollered and raced over to him, reaching him just as his body began to shrink, bones shifting beneath his flesh as it lost all of its scales, turning creamy and smooth.
Another pained growl left his lips and his wild violet eye looked down at her, the agony she could feel flowing through him shining in it.
She couldn’t breathe as she kneeled beside his head and petted him, stroking along the line of his muzzle, trying to comfort him and take some of his pain away. His eye closed and he snarled, his jowl peeling back off his fangs, shifting beneath her hand. His body shrank, wings disappearing into it, and his head began to transform. The change was quick from that point, and in little more than a blink of her eyes, he was an elf again.
A very naked elf.
He lay with his head in her lap, curled up on his side and shivering, his pale skin spotted with sweat as he breathed hard.
Taryn ran her fingers through his blue-black hair, smoothing the damp strands back from his forehead and his pointed ear. He groaned when she accidentally brushed the tip of it and his eyes fluttered open. Dark-sounding words in his own tongue left his lips as he looked up at her, violet eyes still swimming with the pain echoing through him. He was cursing. She had noticed he tended to do that in the elf tongue rather than one she could understand, as if she might be offended if she heard him swearing or would think less of him.
“What happened?” she whispered, wanting to know because she didn’t understand and she needed to if she was going to find a way to stop it from happening again.
He closed his eyes, slumped against her and blew out his breath. “I ran out.”
She averted her gaze when he rolled onto his back, exposing himself for a split second before his armour appeared, black scales rippling over his bare skin in the same way they had when he had transformed into a dragon.
“How did you run out? It has only been a few hours.” She frowned down at his face, keeping her gaze locked on his closed eyes.
They opened and met hers. “I did not take enough.”
“Oh.” Because he had felt guilty about biting her and taking her blood. Her frown intensified. “That was stupid of you.”
He frowned right back at her.
She didn’t give him a chance to speak.
“I know you think you are being noble by only taking a small amount of blood from me… and that you feel guilty still even though I have forgiven you… but what in the gods’ names did you think you were doing?” She almost growled that question at him as her mind filled with all the possibilities, most of them ending with a horrible outcome. One haunted her most of all though, chilled her blood and left her cold and empty, and it was one she knew would make him see sense. “What if this had happened when you had been flying, Bleu?”
“I could have teleported.”
She did growl now. “You are weak from the uncontrolled shift… do you think you can teleport?”
He looked away from
her and it was all the answer she needed.
“I will not have you kill yourself because you think you are doing me some sort of kindness… sparing me from something. If you will not take enough blood to make your abilities as a dragon last, then I will not give you any at all.” She went to stand but his hands shot up over his head and locked tight around her bare upper arms. She looked down at him, right into his eyes, and waited for him to speak. When he didn’t, she gave him an ultimatum. “You either take the blood I am offering to you… or I go alone into my brother’s camp to steal the sword.”
He flashed long white daggers at her, his violet eyes brightening in response to her threat. It was more of a promise.
“Fine,” he ground out, eyes darkening by degrees, and dragged her right arm forwards, towards his face. “But remember you asked for this by leaving me no other choice.”
She gasped as he twisted her arm towards him and sank his fangs into the tender skin on the underside of her forearm.
The brief sting of pain was followed by a rolling wave of bliss, warmth that heated her right down to her bones, stirring fire in her veins. Her eyes slipped shut and she sank into the flames, let them flutter around her. Dragon fire. He made it burn in her blood, rousing her deepest instincts, the ones that shoved at her control.
A growl curled from her lips as those instincts seized hold of her, forcing her eyes open, making her look at the male drinking from her.
Her fated one.
The hunger to mate with him was strong, near impossible to deny but she fought it anyway, aware that if she gave into it, she might end up with her heart broken.
Bleu’s eyes locked with hers, held them firm, cast a spell on her that had her quivering all over, aching and hot with need. She had to mate. The urge crawled over her skin, making it itch and feel too hot. She needed to satisfy this hunger, needed to scratch that itch he had started when he had come at her, all brute force and wicked power. She shuddered as he pulled on her blood, a deeper one that had it all rushing towards him, and gods she wanted him to take more of her into him. She wanted to be bound to him.
She wanted to possess him.
He was hers.
He would be no one else’s.
Never.
She bared her sharpening teeth and snarled through them, a deep rumbling growl born of her possessive thoughts. The urge to fight welled up, intoxicating, seeping into her mind and her heart to take control of it. She had to fight whoever might take her mate from her.
A female flickered into her mind.
The one with the black hair and golden eyes.
She had seen the way that female had gazed at Bleu with affection in those beautiful eyes in the war room.
Taryn snarled again. She would claw the female’s eyes out, ensuring she could never gaze at her mate again.
Bleu was hers.
No one else’s.
She looked over her left shoulder, towards the towering pale castle where the female waited, probably for Bleu.
A roar left her lips and she shoved onto her feet, tearing her wrist away from Bleu’s fangs.
She would slay the female and then Bleu would be hers. He would love her.
Forever.
A strong hand clamped down on her right arm just above her elbow and spun her to face the owner. She went to snarl and it ended in a gasp as his mouth descended on hers, fierce and hot, stoking the fire in her blood to a thousand degrees. She moaned and clutched his muscular shoulders, pressed closer to him and lost herself in the kiss, forgetting her desire to kill as it was replaced with a desire to drown in this male and his hunger for her.
His lips broke away from hers, their foreheads pressed together, but his hands still held her, gripping her with the same intensity as she clung to him.
“Better?” he murmured, his husky deep voice making her insides quiver and flip, and she melted against him, unsure how to answer his question because she didn’t understand it.
Something had been wrong?
He pulled back and his black eyebrows drew down, his violet eyes searching hers. A sigh left those lips she desperately wanted on hers again and she trembled when he brushed the knuckles of his left hand across her cheek.
“Who did you want to kill?” he whispered and she recalled that she had desired to do such a thing.
She slowly looked back at the castle, felt ridiculous now as she thought about it, but at the time the need had been fierce, gripping her tightly, and it had felt like the right thing to do. The only thing to do.
“The black-haired female,” she said in a low voice, little more than a murmur as fear took hold of her, her heart whispering that her male was going to be upset with her and that he was going to defend the female, maybe even confess his desire for the mortal.
Taryn tried to pull away, a sudden need to distance herself gripping her, but Bleu held her too tightly, not allowing her to escape.
He sighed. Husked, “She is nothing to me, Taryn. It is just the bond messing with you. I view all males as a threat, and you view all females.”
That wasn’t true. She didn’t view the phantom females as a threat.
She only viewed the mortal female she knew to be a rival for his affection as one.
“She has feelings for you.” She lifted her eyes to meet his, put force behind those words that she hoped made it clear that he couldn’t fool her into thinking otherwise. She knew what she had seen and she trusted her dragon instincts, and they were the one labelling the mortal as a threat, not the bond.
“As a friend.” There was something in the way he said that and the sorrow that flitted across his feelings that rang alarm bells in her mind and had her on the warpath again.
“But you desired something more?” She broke free of his grip and backed away from him, a dull ache starting up in her chest, one that grew sharper with each beat of her heart.
“Taryn.” Bleu reached for her but she shook her head. She wouldn’t go back to him, not until she knew the truth. He sighed and lowered his hand, his shoulders sagging with it. “I thought I had stronger feelings for her… but I was mistaken. You made me see that.”
Her eyes widened. “Me?”
He nodded. “I was… lonely… and it made me believe that I felt something for Sable… but seeing you again made me realise that I felt nothing for her beyond friendship. I wanted someone to love me, and someone to love, and I settled on the first female I saw who I found attractive.”
Taryn snarled at that.
Bleu held his hand up. “Let me finish before you go on a rampage.”
She had half a mind to refuse, but the tender edge to his violet eyes and the emotions that flowed through their link had her remaining where she was, because she had the feeling that this was a monumental moment for him, that her male rarely spoke of his feelings and this was difficult for him, and important.
For both of them.
“Sable could never have given me what I wanted… because there is only one female in all the realms who could give me that… and that is you, Taryn.” He shook his head when she opened her mouth to speak. “No… not because of fate or a bond… but because of the way you look at me… the way you make me feel when I’m around you. You give me a purpose, and that purpose is to protect you… to always make you happy… to take care of you… because… it is you I love.”
Taryn stared at him, reeling, mind racing and thoughts scrambling.
His look turned uncomfortable and he scrubbed a hand around the back of his neck, and a ripple of hurt went through him. It drove her into action.
Before he could turn away or withdraw or teleport or something equally as annoying, she hurled herself against him, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. He moaned, slipped his arms around her waist, and held her against him so hard that she couldn’t breathe, but she didn’t care as she sank into the kiss and let his words run around her mind, using them to chase away the ones that had started to haunt her.
Teaching B
leu how to shift into a dragon had brought a moment of brightness into a dark time, but it had also made something else hit home.
Her brother would die if their plan succeeded.
Bleu stopped kissing her and pulled back. “What is wrong?”
She shook her head and kissed him again, trying to make him and herself forget about it. He had just told her that he loved her, and she wanted to say the same to him, but thoughts of her brother stole her voice and darkened what should have been one of the happiest moments of her life. Bleu refused her and his hands caught her shoulders, pushing her away.
“Tell me, Taryn,” he whispered, so imploring and tender that tears welled up in her eyes. He frowned at them, lifted his left hand and swept the pad of his thumb beneath her right eye and then her left one, dashing them away. “Why are you sad?”
That question made her truly believe everything he had told her, because the look on his handsome face said he needed to know so he could make her happy again. She wasn’t sure that was possible.
“The battle… I might lose a part of myself—will lose a part of myself.” She looked away from him and sighed as the thoughts she had been trying to shut out crowded her mind.
“I can imagine how that feels,” he murmured and she believed that too. This time, she could feel it in him, a pang that was familiar to her now that she faced losing her brother. He sighed. “I have come close to losing my sister a few times, and I feel I would be empty without her in my life.”
Empty.
That hit her hard and tears burned her eyes and stung her nose. She turned away before he could see them this time and stared at the beautiful lands that surrounded her, green and lush, like something out of a fairy-tale. But they seemed to have lost all colour and warmth as she looked at them now, feeling cold to the bone.
Another sigh escaped Bleu. “I can feel you, remember? There is no use trying to hide things from me, not when I feel your pain as if it is my own.”
He moved around her and brushed his left knuckles across her cheek, his tender gaze stealing her breath and warming her cold heart. He opened his hand and cupped her cheek, trailed his fingers along her jaw and tipped her head up.
Possessed by a Dark Warrior Page 37
