Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
DECLAN
T his woman, this Brianna, who’s walked into my cell as if I’m not something to fear, is everything my nightmares terrorize me with any time I’m able to sleep.
Instead of answering my question, rising to the threat and the anger in my tone, she wanders into my space further, curiosity filling her eyes. Nothing about her seems concerned that I’m a killer, a monster to fear, and that scares me most of all about this innocent young woman.
She reminds me of my sister. I shake the thought as quickly as it comes. I can’t think of Krystana, I can’t imagine her in a place like this, or I might not survive another night.
“What are you doing?” I snarl.
She looks up at me, her dark brown eyes meeting mine, and she sighs. “This is how you live? How long have you been here?”
Her question seems sincere, and while her gaze tries to hold mine, I look away, but not far enough. From her eyes I drift down over the soft features of her face. The smooth ridge of her petite nose, the elegant pout to her full lips, to the roundness in her cheeks. The slope of her neck looks inviting in a way I’ve never looked at a female, especially a human female. While my brothers all seem content to break our dragon laws, I have no interest in a human, especially after all they’ve done to me and others like me. Her breasts aren’t huge like her size would insinuate, but she’s got a good handful, and her hips are made for big hands gripping them. The juncture between her legs is filled with deliciously thick thighs, as though she doesn’t have any interest at all in adhering to the skin-and-bones ideal humans have put on their women.
She’s not all soft though. I can see the strength in her body and her mind. My hand twitches with the urge to pull the tie from her hair to see how long it is and how it would feel running through my fingers.
I growl at myself and my dragon who is far, far too interested in this female…this woman. She’s probably bait. A trap that her father sent down, though the family resemblance only shows in the cool, tawny rose tint of her skin and the high cheekbones. Her eyes don’t have the cruel edge of emptiness like her father’s.
I gesture vaguely at the concrete wall across from the door. “I was keeping count, but I stopped a while ago.”
She moves to where tally marks fill the wall and starts counting.
Fuck me, she starts counting.
“I don’t know who this clan witch is, or how to find her, but we have to get you out of here.” She hasn’t turned back to me yet, and I’m glad for it. I couldn’t bear to see pity in her eyes right now.
“You can’t. Even if I could make it through the magic guarding the door, they’d never let me further than a few hundred yards before these cuffs would do worse than keeping me trapped in this form.”
I know I should shut up, stop spilling my secrets to this girl, but there’s something about her that makes me want to tell her more.
“Then we’ll get the cuffs off.” She says it simply, matter-of-factly, and I want to believe her.
“Unless you’re a skilled witch or you have the key, there’s no removing them.” I sigh, moving to the concrete slab that serves as my bed, and I sink onto it, pulling my knees up close to my chest.
The fresh wounds from tonight’s battle still burn, even though they’ve sized down to match my human form, and I don’t want her noticing them.
I don’t want her to see more of the horrors I’ve been through, no matter what I claimed moments ago.
Surprisingly, she crawls up onto the slab next to me, more curiosity in her eyes as she takes one of my hands in hers, turning it this way and that, as if she’s looking for a way to remove the cuff.
“There’s no keyhole.” She frowns, her brow getting adorably furrowed. “How does the key work, if there’s no keyhole?”
I shake my head, ignoring the way her simple touch seems to light up places in my body that I thought were near dead. “It’s a magical key, princess. Not a physical one.”
“I’m not a princess. Stop calling me that.” She purses her lips, as if she’s determined to find some way to make my life even a little easier.
If only.
“I used to dream of a princess coming to rescue me. I guess I’ll have to keep dreaming.” I let my irritation at her existence in front of me filter through into my voice. I don’t want to admit to her, or myself, that her company is almost a relief.
I have no idea anymore how any of my expressions come across.
“I’ve never met a man who wants to be saved, let alone by a princess.” She nudges me with her shoulder, and then her face falls. “Let alone a dragon. Usually, the knight is going to slay the dragon for taking the princess and most likely eating her.”
“Only human males would punish a dragon for devouring a female until she’s writhing with so much pleasure she might die.” I carefully reach up, wanting to cup her cheek, but before I do, I think better of it. My hands are covered in dirt, and worse, and I don’t want to mark her flawless cheek with my muck.
Her eyes widen as her body flushes and her cheeks pinken. I want to laugh at her response, but it does something to me and my dragon to know that thought turns her on.
She clears her throat and focuses on the cuffs again. “If I can’t get you out of these cuffs, and I can’t get you to leave through the door, is there anything I can do to help?”
With a sigh, I whisper, “This helps.” I say it almost begrudgingly, but I do mean it.
Her eyes flutter back up to mine, her perfect lips parting. “What?” The word is breathy in her melodic voice.
“Company. Someone to talk to who doesn’t treat me like a monster.” I can’t look at her, can’t even think about saying anything more right now. Not when I feel like these few moments with her have broken something deep inside me. There’s a calmness I haven’t felt in a long time, but worse than that my rage boils to the surface without my walls to hold it back. I’m feeling everything I’ve been trying to suppress.
How can I tell her that just being with her, just knowing she’s not afraid to sit next to me, to touch me without causing pain…makes me feel more like a man than I’ve felt in what feels like years?
Her hand reaches for mine again, and this time it doesn’t seem as focused, but just as curious, as she looks, not at the cuff, not at the piece of spelled metal that keeps me prisoner, but at my hand itself.
“I read online that shifters heal quickly, too quick to leave scars, or even marks. But you…” She gently rubs a thumb over one of my jagged fingernails, and then down a scar from one of my earliest battles.
I shouldn’t have underestimated the lynx. He was small, especially compared to my dragon, but he was fast, and he got a claw lodged in my foot and ripped a few scales loose as I tried to shake him off of me.
“It’s another gift of the cuffs,” I say bitterly. “They bind all magic, or damn near all of it. I heal faster than you would, but not by much. Not anymore.” I dare a furtive glance at her as she traces exposed cuts, bruises, and scars.
I’m half certain I’ve finally snapped, finally lost my damned mind. That would make more sense than believing I actually have a gorgeous woman in my cell, looking after my wounds as if they cut her as deeply as they cut me. If it weren’t for the fact that her soft, gentle hands caress the edges of my wounds, the callused skin around them, if it weren’t for the fact that I’m certain I couldn’t have conjured her lightly floral scent with a hint of vanilla in a million years, and the fact that the damned Scottish wolf gave her my name, proving that if she is a hallucination, then at least she’s a shared one, I would know without doubt I’ve given into the darkness and lost my mind all together.
“I can’t stay late tonight, but I can come back tomorrow, if that would be okay?” Her eyes find mine again, a weird sense of hope searing from inside, and it’s as if she’s fixed me with some kind of spell, because there’s no way I can look away now. “The house should be pretty quiet, and I’ve only got two classes, so I could come back early.” She smiles at me hesitantly. “That is, if you want me to?”
“Of course.” The words are out of my mouth so quickly, and my voice seems gruff from disuse, but I don’t regret agreeing.
Even if this is some kind of torture, I know it’s too late to turn back now, and even if I could, I don’t want to give up this small piece of relief. At least this way, I might die with some of my own dignity intact when the time comes.
She nods once, like it’s a done deal. “Do guards watch you during the day? Is there any time that I have to worry about being caught?”
I shake my head. “Someone shoves a tray of food through the slat in the door early in the morning, and then as long as we don’t make noise, as long as we don’t draw attention, no one bothers with us. Not until they come to drag us to a new fight.”
“Fight?” Her brow furrows again, and I swear, it just makes her cuter.
“Yes, your father is an extravagant cock fighter. Instead of roosters or dogs, he captures shifters and makes them fight.”
Her mouth hangs open in disgust. “That’s barbaric.”
You’re telling me.
I think it, but I don’t dare say it out loud. Not when I don’t know how she’s here, or whose side she’s really on.
“Until tomorrow then.” She presses her palm to my cheek, and whispers. “Declan.”
Gods, how I’ve longed to hear someone use my name, someone treat me like I’m worth something more than my teeth and talons.
And how fucking painful it could be if she doesn’t return tomorrow.
I watch her leave my cell, keeping my eyes on her as long as I can before she closes the cell door again, before I slump back against the cold wall, knowing I’m just in for another night of painful, restless sleep.
It’s a few minutes before I hear the wolf, Ewan, speak, as if he was waiting to make sure the coast is clear.
“That was new.” There’s a gruff growl to his voice as always.
“And none of your business,” I snarl possessively.
“Come now, friend, surely you don’t think you can keep your little princess entirely to yourself, when we’re all trapped here. Mayhap she wants to meet a wolf next. Or a bear.”
I snarl, tempted to throw my cell door open, as we did the first few nights we arrived here, just for the chance to talk to each other easier.
The torment that followed the action was never worth doing it again, and it only took three or four mornings of punishment before we gave up on that thought all together.
The problem with arguing with him, even now, would be that there’s no point. She’s not mine, I won’t be able to keep her all to myself. Not when I can’t even leave these concrete walls.
If she wants to meet Ewan, or the elusive bear who refuses to give us a name, who told us day one he didn’t want to make friends just to have to kill us both, I know there’s no way I could stop her.
So why does the idea of her even talking to one of them, let alone touching, or comforting one of them, make my stomach churn worse than it does when the spells rip my dragon from my skin?