by C. A. Storm
I pulled her behind me, unleashing my scales and wings as I guarded her with my body.
“SHOW YOURSELF!” I commanded.
How dare they intrude here and now? Had they forgotten about dragons? It was time to show them why we were the most feared creatures in this world and any other.
Three Enochian stepped forward, unfolding the light they used to hide within.
I snorted.
Malakhim. They sent three mere angels to face a dragon?
The malakhim were the lowest order of Enochian, of the lowest of their choirs. Little more than messengers, these were what they thought could take down a dragon protecting his mate?
Arrogant.
“Go, little mate, get to the Sanctuary. I will find you there and we will continue, after I have dealt with these interlopers.”
“Um,” she said in her soft voice as she gently patted my lower back. “No.”
No?
Turning my back on the malakhim, I looked down at my little mate, who was looking up at me with her chin jutted out adorably.
“Little mate, it is my duty to protect you. Please,” I gritted out the polite word. Audrick would be impressed it was even in my vocabulary, “I do not wish to frighten you with violence.”
She blinked at me.
“That’s actually kind of sweet,” she said, a small smile blossoming across her face, and I caught my breath at the sheer beauty of her smiling countenance. “But there’s something you should know about me…”
Crossing my arms over my chest, steeling myself to resist her adorable, but pointless attempts, to sway me from my decision to send her to safety, I nevertheless asked, “And what is that, my little mate?”
The air around us shimmered as I felt her drawing the heat from the sun, from the earth beneath our feet, even from my flesh. This did not bother me, I was a dragon, I had more than enough heat for her to draw on, and I would give her whatever she desired.
I expected her to transform once more into the wind, to put herself out of harm’s way, but she shocked me.
Her flesh bleached out, the rich, golden color fading until it was the white of snow. Her eyes burned with a cold radiance, the mahogany irises melting away to the icy winter blue of the Arctic seas. Her hair undulated, writhing about her like living serpents, dancing in phantom breezes, as she became the living embodiment of Winter.
She was fucking glorious, and she was mine.
I quietly thanked the Fates, even knowing that I was now forever indebted to them for blessing me with my little mate.
“I’m a monster,” she said, giving me a shrug and that smile that made my knees weak and cock stiff. “Time I remember that.”
Indeed. It seemed we were both monsters, and it was the Enoch who would remember this lesson for centuries to come.
Chapter 15
Yuki | Shadow Lake, Rocky Mountains, CO | December 6, 2017
When the dragon…Vilhelm…ordered me to run, I got a little angry. I was a yuki-onna! Humans and yōkai alike feared our wrath! Granted, I hadn’t fully come into my powers yet, but Susanō’s Right Testicle, I was getting tired of reacting. I was acting like a scared child instead of the bad ass bitch my family had raised me to be.
Twice today, I’d had some man step in to save me. First, with the putto and Kincaid, and now again with the dragon and whatever it was lurking on the other side of his huge body.
Enough. Time to prove I was more than a smart mouth and bad attitude.
“No,” I told him, and bit back a grin as he spun around and pinned me with an incredulous look.
“Little mate,” he gritted out between clenched fangs, his opal eyes blazing with frustration, “It is my duty to protect you.” His fists flexed at his sides, wicked ivory talons flicking in and out like a cat’s claws. “I do not wish to frighten you with violence.”
I blinked as my angry retort died on my lips.
He wanted to protect me, as much from witnessing him being violent as from his need to protect the one he declared as his.
The realization warmed me from within, a molten heat that left me panting as raw desire shot through me. No one had ever wanted to protect me, not like this. My family loved me, but it was a tough love at best. More of a ‘to swim with the sharks, you must be a shark’ love that encouraged constant pranks, surprise attacks, and a lifetime of martial training in weapons, fists, and magic.
The dragon, however, was looking at me as if I was the most precious thing in existence, a delicate blossom he was terrified of harming; but more, I could see in those luminous eyes a desperate need to be accepted, and he was afraid of scaring me off—though I doubt he’d ever even admit it to himself.
I felt an actual smile escape my control. When was the last time I truly smiled and meant it?
“That’s actually kind of sweet,” I said softly, tempering my words and resisting the urge to throw myself into his arms and give him a kiss he’d never forget. “But there’s something you should know about me…”
He crossed his thick arms over his broad chest, tilting his chin up as he ignored the approach of whatever was coming for us to give me his entire attention.
“And what is that, my little mate?” he asked in his deep, accented voice that made my insides quiver.
I decided to show him.
I dropped my flesh mask, letting my true self emerge from within me. My body temperature plummeted and I drew in the heat surrounding me. When I felt the raw, potent heat of him streaming into me, it was a shock. He was pure, unadulterated heat, a living inferno that eagerly fed my hunger. For the first time in my life, I felt comfortable in my own skin. More, despite tempering my hunger, not wanting to draw too much of his heat, I found that he was completely unbowed by the heat I drained from him. I doubt he even noticed it, he just stood there, a majestic beast of a man, watching me intently as I revealed my true self.
Going by the massive bulge straining against his blue jeans? He liked what he saw as much as I liked what I saw.
A mutual admiration society of two individuals.
I could get used to this!
“I’m a monster,” I said with a shrug and a grin. “Time I remember that.”
Besides, going by the way my hormones had been going crazy the last few days, I was afraid I knew what was really happening. My twenty-fifth birthday was rapidly approaching, and with it would come my first transfiguration, when I would become a lot less squishy.
Unfortunately for me, with that would come the desire to procreate. Often. One of the downsides of being a yuki-onna, besides our nasty habit of being literal frigid bitches capable of freezing a guy’s dick off if we lost control.
Could be worse, I guess…some yōkai hid fangs and other nasty traps in their genitals.
Here and now, however, my biggest concern was getting the big dragon to let me prove myself capable.
A rueful smile crossed his handsome, if draconic, face. “Very well, little mate. We shall battle together. Let us ensure the angels fear to tread where we dwell.”
Okay, so I wasn’t quite ready to use the L-word at all, but a guy willing to fight side-by-side with me? He was quickly earning some serious bonus points.
Flicking his wings, he spun back to face the approaching…whatever.
Peeking around his huge body, I caught my first glimpse of…humans. They were just humans. Three of them, and not all that dangerous looking. They looked like college students out skiing, two guys and a girl, dressed in winter gear, and looking little more than lost campers as they emerged from the trees.
Reaching out my other senses, I drew in a sharp breath. Surrounding each of them, they had brilliant white auras, nearly invisible in the daylight, that flickered about their upper bodies in a beautiful halo.
One of them stepped forward, a young girl wearing huge fuzzy boots, leggings, and an oversized, light blue, quilted coat. Her scarf flowed in the breeze as she pulled it down to speak.
“Unclean creatures, we know you ar
e gathering,” her voice rang out clear with authority. There was a strange quality to her voice, as if multiple people were speaking simultaneously. “If you do not cease, the fury of the Lord shall fall upon thee with righteous wrath. Return to your prisons, or we shall be forced to once more take up arms against thee!”
The Lord? What Lord? Which one did these creatures serve?
Hey, give me a break. I’m Japanese and was raised in the Shintō religion. I kept forgetting about the Christian version of God, which made these angels.
I rapidly flipped through everything manga and anime had taught me about angels, but let’s face it, anime wasn’t exactly known for being true-to-life. Yomi’s Tits, I was just glad yuki-onna were usually beautiful or cute in anime!
“Vilhelm Vindorm,” I said softly as I came beside him. “Who are they?”
He curled a wing protectively around me, shielding me as he glared across the clearing with his legs braced and arms crossed. “They, my little mate, are Enoch scum. They’re just malakhim, bottom-feeders and lickspittles, and an insult.”
“What do you mean?” I kept my body loose, eyeing the three glowing humans, who seemed content to just stand there and stare at us with creepy, blank eyes.
“They’re not even warriors,” he replied in contempt. “They’re little more than messenger birds, squawking the words their betters place upon their tongues.”
“How did they find us?” I asked, but before Vilhelm could respond, one of the other malakhim spoke.
“He is all-seeing, all-knowing, repent and find salvation through purification,” the second one boomed, his voice again a chorus.
Vilhelm snorted in disgust. “They have spies everywhere, and you stink of Enochian magic. Someone placed a spell on you that allowed them to trace you.”
Well, fuck.
Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out Masa’s amulet. I could feel her essence within it, having answered my earlier call for her to come to me. Spirits weren’t bound by the same physical laws we were, and no matter the distance, Masa could always be pulled to her medallion in an instant.
“Masa, oide!” I called her forth. When she materialized before me, Vilhelm only gave her a brief, curious glance before he turned those uncanny eyes of his back to the three…what did he call them? Lickspittles? I’d have to remember that one. “I’ve been tagged, could you track the source for me?”
‘Of course,’ Masa mentally sniffed, affronted, then she gave me a doggy grin as she gave Vilhelm a look. ‘Well, well, well…who’s this?’
Narrowing my eyes, I was about to mentally respond with the appropriate venom, when Vilhelm preempted me.
“I am her mate, Vilhelm Vindorm,” he proclaimed grandly.
I shut my eyes and resisted the urge to kick him, only the thought of bruising my toes keeping me from planting a size 4 boot up his rectum. Okay, so maybe the obvious pride in his voice also soothed some of the instinctive need to inflict bodily harm upon his personage, but he had no idea of what he had just done.
‘Oh? Really…that’s great news!’ Masa’s smirk transferred my wrath from Vilhelm to her.
“Don’t say a word, Masa,” I whispered loudly, through teeth I was unable to unclench for some reason. “Not one word!”
But the bitch disappeared before I could complete the command, and I knew…I knew…that my entire Clan would hear about this before the day was through.
The Fates hated me. That was the only explanation.
Apparently, the lickspittles…I loved that word…were tired of us having a domestic discussion.
“You do not understand the wrath you court with your disobedience,” the third one called out in his multilayered voice. “You have until daybreak on the morrow to vacate these lands, or divine justice shall seek thee out and mete out punishment for your transgressions!”
Quirking an arrogant brow, Vilhelm glanced down at me. “Well, my little mate, shall we send a message of our own?” Then he gave me a smile that flashed twin dimples, one that promised wicked things I was way too tempted to experience.
Unable to stop an answering grin of my own, I dipped my head, “Hai, Vilhelm Vindorm. Let us show these lickspittles that we’re not very good at following orders.”
With a booming laugh, he attacked.
I took a moment to appreciate the sheer, brutal beauty of the dragon in motion. He hadn’t even bothered to fully shift, still maintaining that partial transformation, combining the best aspects of both man and beast.
In an instant, he was across the clearing, the powerful muscles of his body uncoiling as he grabbed the two men by their throats. They resisted, or attempted to, and I could see their halos flaring gold as they created wing-like shapes behind them, battering futilely against the massive beast who easily lifted them from the ground.
Before the third, the female, could respond, I joined the fray.
Disbursing into the wind, I eddied around her, stealing her breath, preventing her from crying out or speaking in that eerie voice again. As she gasped for air, I solidified, placing my hands on her exposed cheeks, and rapidly leeched the heat from her body.
Instantly, her body quit moving as every muscle became too stiff to move, locking into rigidity. Her skin drained of color, her rosy, golden skin fading to white then turning a sickly blue-gray as the blood flow to her skin ceased entirely. Her heart stuttered, slowed, and I knew her extremities were turning blue, dying, as her nose and ears began to blacken.
Every cell in her body was shutting down, every molecule losing its momentum, yet her eyes, her empty eyes, glared at me with the fury of a thousand souls. In those eyes, I could sense the others she was connected to, like a swarm of bees or colony of ants, their consciousness shared between them.
And all of them heard the message my dragon and I had just sent them.
Don’t fuck with the monsters.
Letting the lifeless, frozen corpse drop to the ground, I turned to find the dragon was holding his victims within his wings as he used his freed hands to gut them. Covered with blood and viscera, his icy scales were painted in darkest crimson, like some barbarian berserker straight from the pages of a fantasy novel.
Releasing the bodies, letting them hit the ground, Vilhelm’s chest was heaving, probably more from the thrill of battle than from any exertion, but when he caught my gaze, he quickly turned away from me, drawing his wings in close protectively over his shoulders as he growled, “We should get cleaned up.”
I stared at his bare, muscular back, noticing his hunched shoulders, the taloned hands he was furtively trying to clean by rubbing them against his ruined jeans.
I walked toward him.
❆❅❆
Vilhelm | Shadow Lake, Rocky Mountains, CO | December 6, 2017
She was magnificent. Graceful and cunning, she ruthlessly took down her prey. She didn’t toy with her opponent, went straight for the kill with no hesitation or remorse. She may not have been born a dragon, but she possessed a dragon’s instinct.
Banging the heads of the two men together hard enough to stun their brains, my grip on their throats kept them from singing out, using their voices in what would be a futile attempt to charm and beguile me; but I did not wish to risk my little mate being caught in their pathetic magic.
My talons severed their spinal cords, keeping them from struggling as I held them close to my face. Looking into their dead eyes, the eyes I knew connected them to their Chorus, I hissed, “Do not come for my mate again, or I shall rend your ‘Heaven’ from the skies and see it turned into a Hell worse than the one you created for your kin.”
Curling my wings around my prey, it was a simple matter to use the agile fingers of my wings to grip the two men, as they were far lighter than even my dense human form. My wings were very similar to bats’, as they were effectively another set of arms—albeit highly specialized to allow for flight. Each finger of my wings was tipped by a sharp talon, and they were jointed to allow for incredible maneuverability in the air, a
s well as serving as an extra pair of hands when on the ground.
With my hands now freed, and my eyes locked to those of my paralyzed victims, I drove my taloned hands into their soft bellies, tearing them open with sickening ease, pulling out their steaming entrails. I watched until the last flicker of light in their eyes faded to nothingness as the Chorus received my message.
Unwilling to eat flesh that had been tainted by the touch of the Enochs, I let their bodies fall to the ground. Looking up, I caught my little mate’s gaze, and realizing what she had seen, I was sickened.
I was covered in human blood and viscera, the air fouled by the scent of split bowels and excrement. This was not the way to charm a mate. Even I knew that. I didn’t need Audrick’s disappointed voice in my head to tell me I had erred.
Turning from her, unwilling to see the condemnation—or worse, the fear—in her eyes, I grunted, “We should get cleaned up.”
I could smell a stream nearby, hear the distant babble of the waters as the unseasonable heatwave contributed to a balmy spring-like day, even here high in the mountains.
I took a step toward the stream, intent on cleaning myself before I could face her again, when I heard her following me.
Her step was whisper soft, I doubted even a wolf could have heard her gentle footfall, even in those hard-soled leather boots she wore, but I was attuned to her on an entirely different level.
Or so I believed, until I felt her cool, soothing hand lightly come to rest on my wrist.
“Vilhelm Vindorm,” she said softly. “Wait a moment.”
She was not strong enough to stop me physically, but just the touch of her hand and her words was more than enough to get me to stop. Looking down at where her delicate hand rested on my scaled forearm, I noticed she had returned to her human appearance.
Drawing in my magic, I compressed it within my body once more, letting my scales melt away and my wings retreat until I was as human-seeming as she. Reluctantly, I lifted my eyes to hers.
She was grinning. Her dark eyes sparkling, her lips parted in a smile as she lifted my hand to place it against her cheek. Noticing the blood on my fingers, I resisted, unwilling to place my filthy hand on her beautiful face. She narrowed her eyes at me and huffed, “Look, dragon, I told you I’m a monster. Blood and death don’t make me sick.” She wrinkled her pert, tiny nose, “I may not be a proper flesh-eater, but believe me, I have seen worse.”
