Chapter 4
ísarr
As soon as the door closed on Bianca, I drew in a deep breath and yanked the stupid helmet off my head. With a muffled groan, I scratched at the roots of my horns, where they rose from my forehead. It wasn’t actually itchy, I didn’t have sensation in my horns, but it felt uncomfortable anyway.
What now? I couldn’t stand the thought of being stuck with another being in my home, my territory.
At the same time, my hackles wanted to rise at the thought of getting rid of her.
She was so… I groaned again, louder, then bit my tongue hard enough to sting and forced myself away from her door—my bedroom door.
Now I was picturing her beneath the blankets, wrapped in my scent. Would she be naked?
Swearing, I gripped the edge of the kitchen counter and heard the wood protest. This wasn’t good.
I had good reason to avoid people; it was for their safety, not mine.
In the middle of a snowstorm, that danger was even worse.
I did not want to contemplate how many poor creatures had already caught the wildness of my power and suffered the consequences.
I’d never forgive myself if Bianca was… No, I could not even finish the thought.
My mind filled with what it would look like, anyway.
Her slender body—with her pale skin and dark hair—forever turned into ice.
I’d find her in my bed, curled up and asleep, frozen in time.
My stomach turned in horror, and I rushed to the sink and heaved.
It was a fate too horrible to contemplate.
There was only one option to keep her safe, if it wasn’t too late already.
I threw a few more logs onto the fire so it would last another hour or two, then I raced for the front door.
Even in my shifter grip, the door nearly slammed from my fingers when the wind shoved against it with the force of a gale.
I growled into that blast of power, stepping outside, and secured the panel tightly.
The wind whipped around me, snow coming down hard and obscuring my sight. My instincts sharpened.
In a few steps, I was out in the deep drifts already accumulating in front of my home.
The space was just big enough for me to shift, and the transformation ripped through me, wild and out of control.
I didn’t even think to check my bedroom window to make sure the shutters were closed until after.
They were—of course they were—but my flanks heaved in unease that I’d forgotten to make sure I was unseen.
I had been alone for so long that it had become too easy to shift whenever I felt like it.
The dragon did not care whether he was seen or not.
Soon, my instincts swept through me and obliterated all sense of thought, of the rules of safety, of the need to leave to protect the vulnerable woman in my bed.
As a dragon, I sensed things the human side of me did not even think to contemplate—things like mates and dancing in a snowstorm.
Swiveling my head around, I nosed the closed bedroom shutter and inhaled deeply.
My horns knocked against the wooden panel, but at least that would sound no different to Bianca than the knocking of the tree branches against the roof.
Inhaling deeply, I filtered through the many scents with my tongue pressed to the roof of my maw: snow, ice, fox and deer, the sharp ozone of the storm, and the scents of wood and flame.
Beneath it all was a subtle note that was as unique as my own—hers.
Bianca, mate.
I shifted on my paws, my wings tightening along my spine, my tail lashing in the piles of snow.
She was my mate. The storm called to me, urging me to ride its fierce winds and sow ice and snow with every stroke of my wings.
My mate called to me just as strongly—with the desire to guard her, covet her, and add her to my hoard.
No, I couldn’t. My powers weren’t safe. I had to get away from her.
With a shudder that shook me from the tip of my snout to the point of my tail, I backed away.
My wings spread, caught the wind, and I flung myself skyward.
The storm welcomed me like an old friend.
I swung through the air in a spiral, low above the trees, then opened my mouth and roared into the storm.
It didn’t help. This was normally a time of play, a moment to release who I was, unseen in the thick cloud cover, my powers blending with those of nature herself.
I could not bring myself to fly too far, circling back, over and over, to my cabin. To where she rested, as if her dreams called me back to her. Torn in two, I fought the impulse to protect her by staying close, and protect her by leaving.
I wanted to protect her, shield her from the storm, from the man who’d abandoned her, from anything that could harm her.
But the greater danger was me: my own magic coiled and snarled, never fully under my control.
What if I touched her and frost spread over her skin?
What if I pulled her close, and she froze in my arms? What if loving her turned her into ice?
Despite those desperate fears, the dragon side of me was winning out, no surprise. I became all instinct and feral wildness when I was the beast. The beast, this time, was certain he’d never hurt his mate.
As the storm swirled around my scales, easing the heat pounding in my chest and belly, I flung myself into a rapid descent.
My landing was rough, thudding into the snow and vibrating through the earth.
I didn’t care; my body was heavy with the storm’s weight, and my heart heavier still.
I nosed around the cabin, checked that all was secure, and then I curled up in the snow, right there, and—with one eye open—settled in. Rest and guard, I could do both.
Sleep pulled at the edges of my mind, and I let it take me, sweep me into the currents of dreams. These were usually safe places to explore, to think about the might-bes and envision what they’d be like if they were real.
I definitely wanted to imagine what it would be like to woo Bianca, and to fly out and find the bastard who had put her life in danger today.
If I could trust myself, I’d have stepped into that bedroom with her.
I might have told her that the night would see the temperatures plummet even further; she’d need my heat to stay warm.
Would she have come willingly into my arms?
Blushed as I kissed her? Underneath that pretty snowflake and blue yarn of her sweater, would her curves be small or lush?
I found myself trying to imagine the sound of her moans but couldn’t.
It was pleasurable to picture unwrapping her clothing, piece by clothing piece, though.
I spent my time doing that, revealing each inch of her skin, wondering at her taste.
My tongue flicked at the frozen air, and I sighed as all I tasted was the storm.
So I twisted deeper into the snow, burying myself until only my horns rose like pale spires.
I let one eye stay open, scanning the storm’s shifting white.
The rest of me gave in, sliding further into dreams that felt more solid than fantasy.
At first, they were sweet. Her hair spilled across my pillow, her smile soft, her body warm against mine.
My hands on her waist, my mouth tasting what I hungered for.
Then the dream soured. Her warmth bled away as her skin shimmered blue, then glassy.
Her eyes froze wide, her lips caught in a breath that would never leave. She was ice—a statue in my bed.
In the dark of my dream, a voice cackled—low and vicious, seeping into the cracks of my mind. This is inevitable, it whispered. You’ll kill her. Like you kill everything you touch.
Dark and insidious, it whispered more, evil things, bad things. Things about death and blood and destruction, and how good it would feel to do all these things once my mate was dead and gone. Dead by my hand, frozen in time like a statue to be admired but never touched.
Rage split me open, harsh and furious, it crashed through me like the force of the storm above.
I roared, twisting in the snow in my sleep, fighting to surface and wake, but trapped in a nightmare world.
Still, the voice whispered, and it laughed—full of glee and satisfaction at my pain and anger.
You were banished, shunned, but I’ll welcome you, destroyer!
That’s what it said, and it was like fire splashing down my spine.
Destroyer? No, that was not my name. There was another with that name.
My breath came out in a great exhale of icy fumes and crystals, settling across the snow in front of me like thousands of pale blue shimmers.
I would find this voice. I would hunt the thing that dared whisper such things.
This wasn’t just a dream, I knew it. This was something else, something real, and it had invaded my territory, invaded my sleep.
It had made a mistake trying to reach me at my weakest moment, but I was not making that mistake again.
Destroyer? No, that wasn’t me. Another dragon whose territory bordered mine had that name, and he was the guardian of… My thoughts abruptly took a bad turn then. A guardian of nothing, because the evil had vanished without a trace. But it hadn’t, it was speaking to me in my dreams.
Fear struck harder than the storm.
What if it wasn’t just me hearing it? What if Bianca lay inside that bed, dreaming the same dark dreams?
What if the thing in the dark was already reaching for her?
I curled tighter into the snow, ice burning through me, my breath sharp enough to cut stone.
I wanted to burst inside, to check, to be sure.
I stayed rooted, torn between fear for her safety and fear of myself.