Chapter 22 #2
“Ash!” Race yelled as he took form inside his massive quarters, for the first time he’d set foot in them. Her scent had led him straight there. Smoke, ozone, and her tears hit him all at once.
She sat on the floor, near the wall, her knees drawn up, face buried, lightning still crackling around her in wild, dizzying arcs. The only light came from the fire in the hearth, casting a warm glow in the darkened room.
“Ash.” He crouched in front of her, reaching through the static to smooth back her tangled hair. The energy snapped against his skin like fiery barbs. Good thing he was fire. “What happened?” he demanded. “Are you okay?”
She lifted her head, her eyes red-rimmed, lashes wet. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. “I’m fine. Just…overwhelmed. My powers are a little erratic.”
A little? The damn room was saturated with her energy. He could taste it in the air, bright with electric grief.
She pushed away from him. Back on her feet, she crossed to the bed and started shoving things into her backpack. Her chest rose and fell. The crackle eased, the current seeping back into her.
Calm again—too damn calm for the grief he still tasted in the air. Every instinct in him roared in warning.
He rose, his gaze tracking her every movement. “When you’re scared, it rains,” he said softly, moving closer. “And when you’re angry…or hurt, it’s lightning.”
She didn’t look at him. “I’d really appreciate it if you could retrieve my luggage from Khetra House.”
“I’ll get them for you when we go back to the abbey.”
“No, I’m not going to the abbey. Send them here.” She dropped the lavender soap, grabbed some shirts. “I’d fetch them myself if I could, but I can’t travel.”
“Ash…” He firmed his voice because softness wasn’t working. “I said I’ll get your things. Want to tell me what’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing.” She cast him a perplexed look that didn’t fool him. “I just need my passport, is all.”
He stilled, eyes narrowing. While Ash could be a tempest, this wasn’t her—this was sheer ice. “What’s a passport?”
“Oh, it’s an annoying little book proving you’re a citizen of a country.” She removed her clothes from the backpack again and folded each one with precision. “It’s the only way I can go home. I’m leaving the moment you return with my things.”
He didn’t bother to tell her that the psionics, especially ones like her, couldn’t live a normal life amongst the humans—she was shutting down too hard to hear him.
“This is yours.” He took the morvaen stone from his pocket and held it out.
She didn’t even glance at it. “Keep it. I don’t need it.”
His jaw clenched, his fingers fisting the gem. “What’s going on, Ash?”
“Nothing.” She started folding a shirt. “I live in England. There’s no reason for me to keep searching for Janika.
Obviously, she wouldn’t know the truth beyond my birth mother dying and my parents adopting me.
” Another fold. Another wall between them.
“I’ll wait till you get back with my bags, then book my ticket home. ”
Ire swept through him that she retreated behind this stoic mask, one he fucking hated.
His Ash was warmth and fire, not this frostbitten stranger.
He grasped her wrist before she could pack the shirt. “You left me downstairs in one frame of mind, and now this. You suddenly want to leave? What the hell happened?”
“Nothing happened.” Her voice stayed perfectly composed, like he was the volatile one—and he was fucking close. “I just realized some lessons take longer to learn than others, that’s all.”
His eyes narrowed. “Explain.”
She pulled free, shoved the shirt in, and buckled her pack.
Only the slight tremor in her fingers betrayed her emotions.
“Look, I like you, but we both want different things. Back on Earth, I see that clearly now. I suppose all that insane danger I faced had my adrenaline working overtime, and I sort of agreed to you and me…being together, but—”
Her words hit harder than the gates of Tartarus slamming shut.
Dragging in lungfuls of air, he turned to the glass wall, his fists curling and uncurling. After everything they’d faced, after finally breaking through walls to be together, she suddenly decided this wasn’t what she wanted?
He spun back. “So, you’re leaving, without giving me a chance to prove I’m not like the bastard who hurt you?” What the fuck else could it be?
“Prove?” she flung back, her composure finally cracking. Her eyes blazed with barely contained power. “Prove what, Race?”
Good. Now he’d get his damn answers.
She tossed her pack aside. “You won’t even let me touch you, refused to make love to me when I all but offered myself! And this—” She snatched the obsidian dagger from the bedbench and flung it at him.
He caught his weapon midair. “What about it?”
“Did you think I wouldn’t learn the truth about the dagger?” she yelled. “Kira saw it and nearly fainted with excitement—thought I’d joined the bloody club. Except, I had no idea what she was talking about until she explained.”
Stars! He shut his eyes, wishing he knew exactly what had upset her and set her off.
She laughed, the sound brittle and sharp, scraping down his spine. “Oh, don’t worry, your brooding-loner dragon image remains untarnished. I didn’t say a word to Kira.”
Hell, he pinched the bridge of his nose.
“You knew…” her voice quivered, but she forced it steady. “And you chose to let me walk blindly.”
He dropped his hand. “Godsdammit, Ash, just explain!”
“I told you the dagger glowed when I touched it.” She swallowed hard. “You said it was just the lamplight. You didn’t tell me it was your mate’s dagger—that it would only respond to the one destined for you!”
The words slammed into him like a sledgehammer in the chest, his entire world tilting on its axis.
Not just a shifter’s mate.
A destined mate.
He’d heard Nik mention it when he met Shadow, but he, as usual, hadn’t paid attention. With his brokenness, he never wanted one. Besides, he was a dragon shifter—too damn dangerous to consider a human as a mate.
Dread coiled tight in his gut, and he stared at her. She stayed silent, fiddling with the pack’s straps.
What the fuck had the Fates done?
While he could suffer the dragon’s mating fever alone, he would never put her at risk if he couldn’t find a safe way to give her his full venom.
And now Fate had marked her for him as his destiny, not something he could simply walk away from. Because deep down, he felt it too. And those fucking useless gods knew it.
She looked at him, and her anguished expression shuttered. The realization hit him then that he could lose her—really lose her if he didn’t fix this.
“Look, I get it. But destined mates? Really?” A humorless laugh escaped her, and she picked up her pack.
“It’s all nonsense, even if your dagger says otherwise.
I mean, do we really want some clueless Fate to choose who we should end up with?
Besides, love is for dreamers, and I’ve had that blinder torn off rather brutally.
So…” She headed for the door. “I’m going to ask Kira for another room. ”
“Don’t you dare take another step. I’m not done.” Red-hot rage flooded him. He dragged in a harsh breath. “You know nothing of what you speak—”
“Don’t I?” She spun back, her features set, her stare icy. “You’re immortal, royal, and I’m human, one suddenly thrust into your life. You didn’t even want to claim-mark me! So, forgive me if I doubt your sudden pretense that all this between us is more.”
“It’s because I didn’t trust myself with you, don’t you get it?” He tossed the dagger on the bed. “This pull between us—”
“It’s just lust.”
“By the dark gods, Ash, stop and listen,” he growled, trying to keep his frustration bolted. “First, I didn’t know the obsidian was my mate’s dagger. I was crazed out of my mind when I was spat out onto Earth. Yes, I swore my fealty to Gaia. I know that because of this here—”
He tore off his sleeve, revealing the tattooed sword and a row of runes on his skin. “This ink. But it took decades before I could even function enough to become a Guardian. My mind had cracked because I was in that hellhole longer than the others. It fucked me up.”
Her eyes flickered from his biceps to his face, the first sign she was listening.
“Second, I want you more than my next breath,” he whispered, his gaze tracing her taut features and the wounded eyes she didn’t try to hide anymore.
“But I’m terrified. I cannot bear the thought of losing you.
” He brushed her collar aside, exposing the faint mark on her neck.
“When I claim-marked you, a little of my venom seeped into you—you felt the heat like a fever—I know because we both ended up together in that lake.”
Her cheeks flushed a little, but she remained silent.
“Ashaya…” He gently cupped her face. “A true claiming requires full venom—”
“I don’t understand that.” Finally, she grasped his wrists, her brow furrowing. “You’ve lived on Earth for millennia. How did the women survive you? Did they all need this venom?”
“There were no others,” he said then. “Not since Lemuria, and Tartarus stripped everything else away. Then I saw you, and something inside me awakened. Even my dragon grew restless when you weren’t near. And he despised everyone I was with in the past.”
She rubbed her face and paced to the bench at the foot of the bed.
“How could you believe otherwise?” he asked, following her. “I don’t give a damn about titles. My life is that of a Guardian—a life I want you in always.”
She wheeled back, scowling. “And yet you told me to choose one of them to claim-mark me.”
Nope, she still hadn’t forgiven him for that.
“Like I said, fucked in the head. Still am,” he said wryly. “When it comes to you, it was damn hard to hope you’d feel even a fraction of what I do.”
“How could you possibly doubt it was you I wanted?” she asked, staring at him like he had lost a few screws—hell, maybe he had.
“Koal,” he growled, still seething at the whelp’s obsession with her. “You liked him more—chose him.”
She blinked, then bit her lower lip, hiding her smile. Gods, he wanted to steal that smile right off her, suck it into him, so it lit up all the dark places within.
“Could it be because he didn’t eat his food while it was still moving?” she teased. “Or, rip off a chunk and toss it to me?”
This female. She not only held him in a chokehold with her might but also held him accountable for every blunder, and he reveled in it. “I guess I was terrified of the way you made me feel, so I did shit to push you away.”
“It worked.” Her deep sigh broke free. “Koal wasn’t important, never was, you know that.”
“Aye. But knowing made little difference, because I still wanted to kill him. We dragons are primal creatures, Ash. There is no logic when another male pays attention to their mate.”
“I’m learning.” She pressed her temples like she had a headache. Hell, his own head hurt, too, as if the pressure within was moments from cracking open his skull.
“So, this venom you mentioned.” Her brow furrowed into a tiny V. “How serious is it—for me?”
“Very. I was going to tell you back at Talonhold House, but things escalated. To be honest, I didn’t want to scare you away.”
“Yeah?” She arched an eyebrow, dropping the pack on the bench. “I’ve seen you at your worst, tearing into that wildcat. How much scarier can it get?”
A smile started, then faded. “You’re human, Ash. My dragon seed isn’t a gentle thing. It’s molten heat, built to forge bloodlines. Without the venom preparing your body first, it would burn you inside out.”
“Bloody biology,” she muttered. “Only I would want a walking furnace.”
This female. He drew her closer. With a deep sigh, she settled against him, and the churning turmoil within him eased a little.
Groaning, he trailed his nose along her jaw, inhaling her scent of summer rain. Her warmth seeped into him, and the feel of her body tucked against his… Gods. His mating fever raged, and desire swamped him—
A knock rattled the door, jolting him from the edge of losing control, and Ash hastily stepped back.
“It can’t be for me.” She laughed, the sound low and husky, caressing his senses.
“It’s Nik,” he rasped. He didn’t want to leave, but desperately needed space to get back some control, and to not breathe in her intoxicating scent like the starving beast he’d become. “Give me a minute.”
“I need a shower anyway.” Ash flopped onto the bench, exhaustion softening the sharp edges of her expression, rubbing her hands, still coated with the caldera’s black dust, on her pants.
And he just wanted to lick her all over—
Fuck. He shuffled off, mentally opening and shutting the door behind him.
Hell, it was both a reprieve and a curse. Reprieve, because it gave him space to get his head together. Curse, because her scent made him want to claim her anyway.
And it would mean her death.