by Ava Benton
Just like that, there was a pit in my stomach. The dragon roared as I sat up. “I’m glad,” I replied.
“So, there’s little reason for me to be here anymore. Or for her to stay.”
Smoke stood.
So did I.
“Wait a minute…” he said, then stopped himself.
I felt sorry for him at that moment, but his problems weren’t my problems. I had other things to think about. Like my mate.
I took a deep breath and tried my best to think straight in spite of the dragon’s roar in my head. “I thought you understood,” was all I could say.
“I understand that she needed to be here while she healed. But she can’t spend the rest of her life flying around on a dragon’s back. No offense.”
“And I told you and your sister that there’s no way for her to leave. You can, now that she’s better, but not her.”
“She doesn’t know where we are. She’s no more likely to reveal your location or even your existence than I am.”
“Where is this coming from?” Smoke asked.
I saw him standing there, shaking with rage and frustration, and I wondered how loud his dragon roared.
Her expression softened. “I’m sorry, but this is the way it always was. Just because I’ve enjoyed spending time here with you doesn’t mean I can stay forever. This was never about forever. Both my sister and I have responsibilities. We have lives. We can’t walk away from them.”
“What responsibilities?” I was barely able to hold myself back from throwing her against the wall and yelling in her face until terror broke her down.
Who is she to tell us what to do? Who is she to act as though her responsibilities are more important than what we need?
For once, I didn’t disagree with the dragon’s way of thinking. This girl was nothing. Only one of the fae. She didn’t have our royal blood. She was nothing.
But wouldn’t that make Jasmine nothing, too?
Alina’s deep, sympathetic frown did little to ease my growing rage. “She hasn’t told you?”
“I don’t know anything about her.” And that admission turned my blood to ice. I knew nothing about her.
She hadn’t shared one piece of herself with me.
Our connection ran deep, at a primal level—but there was something to be said for her trusting me enough to tell me about her life. Otherwise, we would always live as master and slave, owner and captive. I didn’t want that sort of future, no matter if the dragon cared or not.
“Maybe you should ask her, then. She’s in her room.” Alina stepped aside to let me barrel past.
Miles and Cash were just coming in, smiling.
I pushed my way past them, too, and went straight to the closed door. I didn’t think twice before entering the code to open it.
“Hey!” she squealed, spinning with her arms crossed in front of her.
I realized all at once that only a pair of panties stood between her and nakedness.
The dragon urged me forward. Throw her onto the bed, pin her down, drive her into it, tell her she’s ours, tell her, tell her, tell her.
“What’s your sister talking about when she says you have responsibilities? What is it you want to go back to out there?”
“Can I put something on, please?”
“Sure.” I didn’t move.
“Can you turn around?”
“No.”
We stared each other down.
“Fine. I will.” She turned her back and dropped her arms. I took in the sight of her perfect, full, firm ass and dug my nails into my palms as the dragon demanded I touch her. Grab her. Fondle and squeeze until she squealed in pain.
It was almost a relief when she slid into a pair of sweatpants, then covered up her smooth, creamy shoulders and back with a t-shirt.
“Now.” She turned back to me and sat on the edge of the bed, hands folded. “What did you want to talk about?”
“You know damn well.” My fury hadn’t cooled in the moments I’d spent waiting for her to dress—if anything, it was worse than ever.
“You want to know about the life you’re keeping me from? Is that it?”
“What could I possibly be keeping you from?” I sneered.
She shook her head, making red hair spill over her shoulders.
I caught the scent of the shampoo she used and it went to my head, spinning around and inflaming my dragon more than ever.
“Your fatal flaw is your pride,” she mused.
“What’s that mean?”
“You should ask Smoke about it, since he’s obviously a deeper thinker than you.”
“If you’re trying to hurt my feelings, you’re wasting your time.”
“Are you sure about that? It seems to me right now that you’re throwing a tantrum because you can’t get your way.” She sighed, crossing her legs. “You think your life is the only one that matters. Your world is all there is. I hate to break it to you, but my sister and I have a family—a clan—of our own, and since our parents died, we’ve taken over their positions.”
“You lead your clan?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Why is that so hard for you to understand? Because we’re women?” She scoffed, but didn’t wait for me to reply. “No. It’s not cut-and-dried. Our uncle is acting leader, but Alina is a highly-respected healer who cares for every member of the clan.”
“And you?”
“I’m my uncle’s advisor. He’s training me, I suppose you could say.”
“So, you don’t actually have a position right now. You’re only learning.”
“Something like that,” she scowled.
“And if you never go back, nothing’s actually been lost. Your uncle will still have his position, and your clan will still be under his leadership. Right?”
“You don’t understand. It’s not that simple for me.”
“What else is there?”
She didn’t flinch or even blink. “I’m promised in marriage. I’ve been promised since the day I was born.”
No! It means nothing! Tell her it means nothing! Nothing that’s happened to her until now matters!
“That doesn’t matter now.”
Her mouth fell open—then, she laughed. “You’re kidding. How can you say that with a straight face?”
“Don’t laugh at me,” I barked.
The laugh ceased immediately, like I had flipped a switch and turned out the lights.
“Your life isn’t the same anymore. The sooner you understand that, the better. You are not the same person you were before the mudslide. Why do you insist on fighting what we both know is true?”
“You think you know it, but that doesn’t make it true.”
Her body betrayed her. I could see it. Sense it. Feel it. Instead of glaring at me, she shifted her focus and stared over my shoulder. Instead of clasping her hands, she rubbed her palms on her thighs. Nervous. Arguing with herself.
“You and I both know what happens when we fly together. You change. You’re free. Isn’t that right?”
“Who doesn’t feel free when they’re flying?”
“It’s deeper than that. You know it. I feel it when you’re on my back.” I took a step toward her. Then, another. “You never feel more like your true self than when you’re connected to me that way. You trust me to take care of you, and I do. And you push me higher, harder, faster. You make me better without even trying. This is the way it’s supposed to be, the way life is supposed to work for the two of us. When will you quit fighting it?”
“Stay where you are,” she whispered when I was only a few feet away.
“Why do you keep pushing me away?”
“Because I have to.”
“You don’t want to.”
“Don’t tell me what I want to do.” She turned her face away. “It’s not entirely up to me, and I just told you why. I belong to someone else.”
“You’ll never belong to anybody but me.” I stood in front of her and took her face in my hands, turning
it back to me. “Don’t you feel it?”
She closed her eyes. “No. I don’t. Just because I like flying with you doesn’t mean we’re meant for each other.”
“Look at me, Jasmine.”
She hesitated, but finally opened those big, green eyes of hers. I could’ve drowned in them. One word, and I would’ve been her slave for life.
She refused to understand. It would all be so easy, if she would only stop fighting what was a fact.
“Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t feel, deep inside, that this is where you belong.”
She started trembling. Her chin quivered. Her eyes went bright with tears. “Don’t do this to me. You’re only making it harder.”
“You’re the one who’s making things harder than they need to be. There’s not a person or a force on Earth that I wouldn’t gladly wipe out of existence if it meant your happiness. There’s not a thing you could ever desire that I wouldn’t move mountains to get for you. Nothing has to stand in our way. Nothing but you.”
I leaned in, while drawing her face closer to mine, and she didn’t resist.
Her eyes closed, her lips parted.
I let myself finally give in to just a tiny piece of what I’d craved since the moment I laid eyes on her when I took that first taste of her sweet, willing mouth. It was bliss, the way her lips moved against mine, the shockwaves of pleasure that ran through her body and into mine when I slid my tongue inside and swept around, exploring and feeling and drinking in her essence.
Her sighs sent a surge of blood straight to my cock, and the way her hands ran through my hair told me this wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t a crazy, breathless, in-the-moment mistake she would regret later.
She wanted me the way I wanted her. At a deep, instinctual level, she knew what I knew: we were meant for each other.
Just as suddenly, something changed.
“No.” She twisted her head away. “No, stop this. We can’t.”
Don’t let her do this! She is ours! We need to possess her!
After that, it was all meaningless roaring in my head, rage and frustration and the agony of thwarted desire.
I pulled her to me, but she pulled back again.
“I said, no. No, Pierce.”
There was no mistaking that. I stood up, painfully aware of the erection straining against my zipper.
My head spun, still wrapped in lust. “How can you keep pushing away what you and I both know is true?” I asked, slightly breathless.
She was even worse off than I was. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, her cheeks burned with color, her lips quivered.
I could smell the desire blooming between her thighs—it was so strong, so demanding, I had to take a few steps away from her for fear of it overtaking my senses.
“I can’t let myself when I know what I know. I already told you.” She shook her head. “I’m promised to Bradley. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
“You had nothing to do with that promise. You said it yourself, it was a promise made when you were born.”
“It was a blood oath. You must understand how serious that it. Your species assigns just as much importance to rituals as we do, especially when blood is involved.”
“There must be some way.”
“If there is, I’m unaware of it.” She was as close to looking like she was about to cry as I had ever seen her. “Please, Pierce. Don’t make this any more difficult than it already is. I have to go back, or else risk breaking the blood oath made when I was born. I have no idea how bad things could become if that were to happen, but I know it would risk a war within my clan. Maybe…” she bit her lip. “Maybe with you, too.”
There was nothing to say to that.
I left the room in spite of the dragon’s demands that I do no such thing.
I understood what my dragon, in his single-mindedness, couldn’t comprehend.
Taking Jasmine as my mate could bring war to our family.
Unless there was a way around the oath.
15
Pierce
“There’s got to be something we can do.” I stood in the center of the library, staring down at my brother.
He sat with his elbows on the arms of the chair, fingers tented under his chin as he stared into space. The way his forehead creased told me he wasn’t daydreaming.
I had told him the whole story, every bit of it. I wouldn’t normally have opened up like that—none of us would have, it wasn’t our nature—but he was my brother and probably the smartest man I knew, and I needed help.
The thought of flying straight to that mansion outside Roanoke and tearing it to the ground appealed to me more than I could say. Brick by brick. Crushing anyone or anything who dared stand in my way.
That would cause her pain, which was something the dragon didn’t understand. Subtleties of emotion were lost on a creature that relied on instinct to survive.
“I wish you would say something,” I muttered when Smoke remained silent for longer than I liked.
“I’m thinking,” he snapped.
“Could you think a little faster?”
“No, in fact. I can’t. This isn’t simple. There are too many moving pieces.”
“I have to have her.” I could barely choke the words out. “You know that, right?”
“I know it.”
“As long as we’re on the same page.”
His head snapped up, eyes meeting mine. “Page.”
“What?”
“Maybe there’s something about blood oaths in one of the scrolls or books. Something I can use.” He stood, elbowing his way past me. “I mean, there’s over a thousand years of wisdom in this room. There has to be an answer.”
“Can I help?”
“No.” He looked at me and grinned. “Make yourself scarce. You’ll only slow me down. I have a system here. I know where everything is.”
I felt less than hopeful as I looked around.
The library looked like a tornado had torn through and always did. Stacks of books piled as high as the eye could see, so many they covered up the books already lined up in double rows on the shelves which lined all four walls. Smoke used a ladder to get to the tops of the stacks.
“If you say so.”
“Stay close by,” he advised, hurrying up the ladder to examine one of his thick, dusty books.
“You couldn’t pay me to stay away,” I promised as I left.
Having him on the job gave me a measure of peace. I trusted him with more than my life. I trusted him with my fate.
I hadn’t spoken to Jasmine since that scene in her room earlier in the day. I wasn’t sure I trusted myself. Knowing her taste, her scent, could only make it more difficult to maintain a distance between us. The dragon could only handle so much rejection without lashing out.
I had to fly, to work off some energy. Nothing cleared my head the way that did. I broke into a run halfway down the tunnel. Anything to get away from there, away from her, away from the silent questions of the rest of my family. The dragon waited, anticipated his chance to take over for the second time in a single day. Unlike the others, I looked forward to the days when I spent twenty-four hours guarding the entrance to the cave and the treasure inside.
I peeled off my clothes and left them in a heap by the cave’s mouth. The dragon stretched, taking over my form, expanding until my body could no longer hold it. I closed my eyes and let the change move through me. When I opened them again, I saw as the dragon saw: sharper, clearer.
My wings unfolded, and I crouched, then sprang. In moments I was airborne, flapping the bulky-yet-delicate appendages to take myself higher. I was deliberate in my movements, working hard, determined to exhaust myself before I returned to the compound. It would be better that way. I couldn’t face her or any of them with a war raging inside me.
Jasmine would be mine. It was inevitable. I would spend the rest of my life with her. I had never felt complete before meeting her. I had never known what it was like to c
are for someone else more than I cared for myself—I knew duty, I knew honor, I knew the responsibility of protecting my family and the treasure we guarded. But I had never known what it meant to throw caution to the wind and go out of my way to help someone when it could mean destruction for me.
The worst part was knowing I would do it all again in a heartbeat, even knowing the way things had gone up to that point.
I would risk Gate hating me forever, sowing discord in my family, bringing an outsider to the cave if it meant saving Jasmine. She was all that mattered.
What I couldn’t do—wouldn’t do—was let her go.
It was as though she heard me thinking about her.
She might have, for all I knew.
No sooner had I shut down the thought of letting her leave me than I detected motion at the rear entrance of the caves. Where I had first brought her in.
She couldn’t do anything to hide that red hair of hers. It stood out like a beacon.
I dove, shooting straight down like an arrow. She only felt my presence at the last second, when I was close to reaching the ground. I landed with a crash so hard it shook the trees.
Instead of dashing back inside, she ran for the trees.
You think you can get away from me? I roared in my head, while the roar which came out of my mouth had no words. Nor did it need any.
Birds took flight all around me, beating their wings in their haste to get out of the way of my rage.
I was the dragon, and she didn’t know what happened when the dragon’s passion was fully roused.
I stretched one of my wings out in front of her, blocking the way.
She stopped dead in her tracks, falling on her ass and scrambling back to her feet.
“Please!” she called out to me.
I heard the terror in her voice and liked it.
She was right to be afraid. If she were any being but the mate I had waited my entire life for, I would’ve made short work of her and tossed aside whatever was left for passing animals to feast on.
She looked up. “Please, Pierce! It’s better this way!”
Better? She thinks this is better? Running away from us?
