29. Ryland
TWENTY-NINE
“Let me go!” Fina snarls, her tiny nails sinking into my arm, leaving bloody crescent-shaped imprints as I try to keep her from the bed that holds Teos’ unconscious body. She trembles in my arms, her body feeling far too delicate and entirely too small. Yes, Fina has always been slightly built. Hell, I’m pretty sure my thigh is bigger than her waist, but she’s always been strong. Tall for a girl, standing well over six feet when she wears her heels, which is practically every day.
Right now, she feels like a drowned kitten, shaking and wet, dripping with blood, and barefoot, making her head not even reach my shoulder. Her clothes are in tatters, her hands are balled into tight fists as her magic sparks in the air around us.
“Draga Mea,” I rasp, holding her tighter, trying to reason with her, but she’s not hearing any of it.
“No! No, you don”t get to call me that! You lost that right when you left me when I needed you!” she shouts, making the three sets of eyes in the room dart up to meet me with raised brows. I growl low in my chest, warning them to avert their eyes and get back down to business. My Dragon is way too close to the surface since finding his mate fighting a Demon and is now hurt and covered in blood.
I’ve only kept the three of them here—two for protection while we finish securing the campus, and the remaining one to make sure the boy doesn’t actually die. I finally kicked the damn Angel out despite his protests. The man and I almost came to blows multiple times until Atlas and Boris told him they needed a full report done. All three of them agreed to not tell the headmistress about her son”s involvement until he wakes up. Since the boy is over the age of eighteen and has a steady heartbeat, it”s something we can legally do, but I’m pretty sure they’re going to get their balls busted for it the moment Teagen finds out.
“Now do what you do best and leave!” she snarls, raising her legs up off the ground before throwing her weight forward.
“Dammit Serafina!” I growl when I lose my hold on her, and we both go toppling to the floor. I reach my arms out, catching my weight before I crush her underneath me, and my damn Little Huntress takes advantage, spinning onto her back and wrapping her toned legs around my waist, making me grunt in surprise when she rolls, sending me sprawling to my back with her on top of me.
My Dragon preens like a damn peacock over having such a feral and capable mate, but her defiance only pisses me off. I dart my hands up, catching her small wrists before she goes for the small blade I know she keeps in her pocket.
“Really!?” I snap at her, but she only shifts her weight, leaning to the side just before she brings her knee up, connecting painfully with my ribs and making me groan. Fina twists her wrists out of my hands, moving to jump off me, but now I’m pissed, and she’s going to have to deal with it.
I’ve given her the time Atlas asked of me. Now we talk.
Lunging forward, I grab her around the waist, side-stepping her kick directed at my other side while my Dragon growls at her in a warning.
“Don”t,” I rasp out, catching her hands in one of mine before wrapping my other arm around her and hauling her off her feet. Jumping up, I nod at the three Dragon shifters checking on Teos. “You stay in this room if you value your lives,” I command.
Andrei shakes his head, a disapproving look in his eye as Dimitri, my only Dragon who has healing abilities, mutters something I don”t quite catch before he goes back to Teos, running his hands over the guy”s arms and legs to make sure there isn”t any lasting damage from the Hell Hounds. Kingston nods, moving to shut the door behind me as I carry my feral mate from the room, hissing and screaming.
“I’m going to castrate you with a rusty spoon and feed it to one of those nasty Hounds!” Fina snarls, and I laugh, shaking my head as I turn her in my arms, then throw her small body over my shoulders as I walk through the small living room and drop her ass on the counter in front of me. “You’ve been spending too much time with Kayla,” I accuse.
Fina doesn”t find this comment as amusing as I do and instantly tries to attack, her hands shooting for my throat with her nails sharpening to tiny points.
“No!” I snap, grabbing her and yanking her forward so she”s pressed tight to my chest, glaring up at me with so much hate that I have to break eye contact.
“Let me go!” she snaps, trying to bring her knee up to catch me in the balls. I dart my hips back just in time to save myself and glare down at her. “You really want to play dirty right now, Draga Mea?” I growl, my Dragon pressing to the surface, wanting to play with his mate. She wants to have a dominance battle? Fine, he’ll give her a damn dominance battle and have her crying out our name underneath us in a matter of seconds. We will be so deep inside her that she won”t know where I end and she begins.
My eyes widen as his thoughts cross my mind, and I have to clench my jaw and shove him back so I don”t spin her around and pin her against this damn counter to fuck her within an inch of her life.
“You have no idea what you’re doing right now,” I grind out, trying to calm my Dragon down enough to have a rational conversation with her. She needs love and care. Understanding and a shoulder to lean on. We need to earn her trust back, and we can’t do that by rutting her into the damn kitchen counter, I remind him. Smoke billows from my flared nostrils, making Fina still, her eyes widening as she stares up into my eyes.
“Is he?” she starts to say, and I nod, closing my eyes as I try to take deep breaths. This does nothing to calm me since all I can smell is her and I swear I cum a little in my pants. “Does he need to come out? I haven”t seen him in a long time,” she whispers, sounding so much sweeter than she was only moments ago.
“No!” I bellow, hands falling from her to grab the edge of the counter on either side of her thighs. I hear her huff in frustration as I try to hold back my Dragon, who is now raging at me to be set free.
“I see you’re trying to keep him from me still,” she snaps like a brat, and I laugh. She’s so mad that I didn’t let her near my Dragon that I never shifted near her for over six months before I left. But what she doesn”t know is that if I had let him out, he would have taken her and had her mated to him in under an hour. Everything I have done is to keep her safe from outside threats and myself.
“Everything I do is to keep you safe,” I snap back, opening my eyes when I finally feel like I won’t jump on top of her. She snorts, actually fucking snorts, and rolls her eyes like she used to when we were kids.
“God save me from your savior complex. All it’s ever done is hurt me. All you’ve ever done is hurt me!” she screams, hands flying forward and shoving my chest. I brace for the move and don”t even rock back on my heels, which only infuriates her more as she starts pounding on my chest with her tiny fists in a fit of rage.
“Stop!” She ignores me because of course she does. This is Serafina afterall. She’ll only listen when she wants to. “Stop! I don’t want you to hurt yourself!” I yell, then freeze when I feel the sharp blade of her knife against the column of my throat.
Damn, she’s faster than she used to be.
“You don’t get to tell me to stop,” she rasps, her voice straining from all the screaming and cursing she”s done over the last hour. I open my mouth, then promptly shut it when she presses the knife harder against my skin. There is a small bite of pain that has me groaning and closing my eyes as my cock throbs in my pants. “No. You listen to me. We may be at the same location, but that doesn’t mean anything has changed. You left. You chose to break our friendship, not me. I’m not letting you back into my life after finally being able to live again.”
My eyes snap back open at the comment, and I frown. What is she talking about?
“I left to keep you safe. Whether you believe it or not,” I whisper, looking down at her and trying to convey the truth of my words, but she”s already shaking her head.
“Safe from what?” she asks, a cold amusement filling her eyes as she glares up at me, her hand no longer trembling as she keeps her knife pressed there. “From the only friend I had? The only anchor that helped keep my magic steady?” she rasps, then releases an emotionless laugh that chills me to my very bones.
“Oh, that’s right. I needed to… what was it you said again?” she snaps her fingers as if the memory has suddenly come back to her. “I needed to find a new fix. Killing people wasn”t worth you putting your life on hold,” she whispers softly, her words cutting me deep as I remember the pain in her eyes as I spoke all those lies. “Something about me being a child. That I needed to find a friend my age because we’ve been around each other for too long and my—obsession isn’t healthy.” I instantly close my eyes, the guilt that has eaten at me over the last three years coming back in full force.
“Serafina,” I rasp when she doesn”t say anything else.
“Guess what, Ryland?” she whispers, her voice closer than it was only seconds ago. I open my eyes and stare into her watery gray ones, taking in the raw pain I see there. “I found a new friend. Someone who won”t leave no matter how hard I try to get him to,” she admits as she scoots forward on the counter and drops to her feet, keeping her knife at my throat as she tilts her head to the side, regarding me like a stranger. “I’m not sure why you keep trying to talk to me, but whatever guilt you feel for leaving that girl is unnecessary. I should be thanking you, really,” she adds, pulling the knife away from my throat and pocketing it as she looks around her small apartment.
“Why?” I manage to croak out, fearing her answer more than seeing her fighting a damned Demon. She laughs and looks up at me once more, and I swear I will do anything to keep her attention on me. I feel like I haven”t breathed in three years, and she’s my first burst of oxygen.
She smirks, but it”s not a nice one. “You taught me more about who to trust than my father ever could have. Consider my obsession well and truly over. You don”t have to worry about that girl anymore. She’s learned her lesson,” she clips out, turning on her heel and walking back to her room, taking my heart and battered soul with her.