Chapter 11 #2
Ash grasped the hand he held out, and he dematerialized them back to the cave, the transition as impersonal as a ferry ride. This same male, who had kissed her that afternoon as if she were the very air he needed to breathe… Night-Race was a bloody statue.
You’re just a passing blip in his endless orbit, Ash. Ugh.
She shivered, desperately needing the warmth of the fire. She hurried across to the flaming pit, only to falter to a halt. A leaf platter sat beside her backpack, piled with pink, plump berries the size of ripened plums, their citrusy-sweet scent wafting to her.
“What are these?” She lifted up a cluster and sniffed. “They smell delicious.”
“Name’s lost to me,” Race muttered, looking like he swallowed something sour. “Been millennia.”
“I’m assuming they’re edible?”
He didn’t respond.
Ash didn’t ask who brought them. There was only one person she could think of who would do that. “How lovely of Koal to think of me. He knows how to make a girl feel special.”
Race’s jaw flexed.
Teasing him was no fun.
With a sigh, Ash set the fruit down, opened the backpack, got out the food package, and unwrapped her cold kebabs. She held four skewers over the flames. They sizzled and released a mouth-watering smell. She held out two to him—
Race shook his head. “I will hunt in the morn.”
“It’s many hours away. I bought enough for us.”
“Ash, I am a dragon. I don’t graze every few hours. I’ll be fine.”
At the terse put-down, her appetite waned.
But she ate her food anyway, then tossed the skewers into the fire before wrapping up the rest. She caught sight of the berry pile again and grabbed one, taking an enthusiastic bite—tart-sweet juice burst on her tongue, running down her chin. She wiped her face.
“Dear Lord, this is heaven,” she groaned, and held one out to him. “You must try this.”
“No.” Race jabbed more wood into the fire.
“Oh, stop sulking because Koal picked them. He’s not plotting to poison us.” She stretched her hand toward where he crouched by the fire, the berry hovering inches from his mouth, one brow arched in challenge.
He met her gaze, his eyes dark as burgundy stone. “I prefer my food still breathing.”
“You really know how to ruin a girl’s fun.” Ash held his stare a beat longer, then shrugged and popped the berry into her mouth. Juice slicked her chin once more. She swiped it with the back of her hand and grimaced.
“Brilliant. Now I’m sweet and sticky. The ants will probably have a field day feasting on me… Say, do you have ants here?”
That muscle in his jaw jumped. Yeah, her words might have been a touch suggestive. She didn’t care.
“If you’re done, sleep. Sunup’s early. I’ll keep watch.”
Awesome. Still keeping the barge pole between them.
What? Did he think she would pounce on him if he napped, because of what happened between them at the lake?
With a sigh, she pulled off her ruined tunic, wiped her mouth and hands with it, then tossed it aside.
She spread her coat on the ground and settled on it, resting her chin on her raised knees.
While the fire warmed her, its glow gilded the hard lines of Race’s profile, turning his silver hair into molten light.
Ridiculously handsome. And about as reachable as the bloody moon.
“Stop looking at me like that,” he growled, his attention still fixed on the flames.
Her heart tripped then skidded at lightning speed. “Like what?” she rasped. “Besides you and the walls with those etchings, there’s nothing else to look at. And you’re reeeally pretty.”
He glanced at her sharply, then went back to stabbing the fire.
“Why do you hate Skaldr, Koal, and Attor?” she finally asked.
“Hate’s not it. It angers me they abducted you to force my hand.”
Okay, she could get that. “Then why did Skaldr call you a martyr?”
“Because he’s an ass, with no clue about what he speaks of.” He rose to his feet, his expression shut off. “Go to sleep, Ash. I’ll be outside. Need to do a quick recon.”
Race paced the clearing. His head pounded, his back ached, and his skin felt ready to split—his dragon had been snarling inside his skull ever since Skaldr’s damned jab.
Martyr?
Fucking Skaldr!
Memories he’d buried—Tartarus, the chains, the screams—surged up from the dark to ambush him, and he clutched his head—
Wraith-warders in rotted armor, wrapped in shadows, voices like knives scraping bone… “Void-iron sssuits you, princeling. Feel those Titanssscript null-sssigils? They drink every spark of your esssence…”
Race grunted, agony whipping through him. Molten shackles seared his wrists, throat, and ankles, and chains rattled as he tried to move.
“Hsshh…the sssweet scent of pain as you break, wishing for a death that never happensss…”
The iron plate embedded in his sternum, the sigils etched on its inner surface, pulsed with sickly power.
Each heartbeat sent waves of fresh agony through him as the glyphs systematically continued to suffocate every spark of his dragon essence. His flame, his strength, his very nature crushed under their suffocating grip.
“Sssubmit,” the wraith hissed. “We’ll loosssen one sssigil.”
He gritted his teeth. Can’t give in…can’t…
“F-fuck… Off,” he spat, bloodied spittle flying everywhere.
His dragon raged against the bonds it couldn’t break as blood poured down his naked form. Oblivion hovered, a blessing they never let him succumb to, dragging him back to consciousness again and again…
Then nothing.
Days of silence in a coffin cell no wider than his shoulders, no room to stand, to shift, to move around. Just darkness and the endless pressure of stone pressing in on him. His dragon, caged, crushed…slowly going mad from the confinement.
“C-Calm…Kaelthar,” he rasped to his beast. “I…I am still here. We’re still together. One day, vengeance will be ours…”
Five and a half centuries of torture, crammed into a space too small for a human, let alone a creature born to soar—and the nightmares still haunted him millennia later.
By the dark gods. Never again. Never. Fucking. Again!
He trudged the weed-choked ground, trying to outrun the memories, but they clung to him like poisonous smoke.
A sound cut through his dark thoughts—chattering teeth.
His dragon side stirred, pushing past the remnants of remembered pain and horror as Race slipped back into the cave.
Ash lay curled on her side near the crackling fire, her pack beneath her head as a pillow, the dark waves of her hair brushing her cheek—so very human and fragile. Just looking at her eased the fury that had stalked him for centuries, giving him a quiet he’d never known in all his brutal life.
She used his cloak to cover her, but it had slipped off her.
Need her, his dragon clawed at his mind. And for once, the man didn’t fight the beast.
Race stripped off his clothes and shifted, scales rippling over muscle, the dragon taking form. He curled against the wall, then swept his tail around Ash, drawing her against his chest. She melted into his warmth, her palms resting against his scaled chest.
“You’re so warm…” she murmured, half-asleep.
A rough rumble escaped him. He liked Ash—hell, she drew him in a way he didn’t fully understand…but he didn’t want to hurt her.
And he would.
He had to get her to Michael before his control snapped, and he destroyed everything. By the dark gods, he hoped the damn portal would be accessible tomorrow.
As her breathing evened out, Race shut his eyes, wrestling against the primal pull toward her.
In his old life in Lemuria, he’d had plenty of females—she-dragons were always seeking him out. But he hadn’t connected with them on a deeper, emotional level.
As for human females…they were too fragile. His fires would kill them.
And fucking Tartarus had messed him up too badly to ever think of more with anyone at all.
Besides, no sane female of any species would want a male like him, mentally scarred, broken, seething with vengeance… Rage at the bastards who’d traded his life to the usurper in exchange for theirs fueled every inch of him—and cursed him to a hell he would never wish on anyone—
Yeah, he fucking would.
And once he found those traitors, those assholes would suffer the same fate, the same torture in Tartarus.