Chapter 5
Five
Casimir
“Nooo!”
The punching bag went flying across the room, spilling its innards courtesy of the slash marks down its side.
My outstretched arm hovered, lingering from the punch like the shout of my anger echoing around the room.
Panting hard from the exertion, I applied a strong effort of will to rein my dragon in, transforming the end of my arm back into fingers instead of claws.
Scales disappeared beneath the skin as I started to calm.
“Those things aren’t cheap. If you need to destroy something, we could go down to the Desolate Quarter. Take out a few buildings, accelerate the renovation project you ordered?”
I glared at the speaker as he stepped fully into the room. He knew the last thing I wanted was to go through the slums.
Florian was warlord of the Ice Kingdom. Head of my enforcers, and my number two, he was also my best friend, which sometimes meant he was my biggest critic and judge. Usually when I desired it least. Like now.
“Hey, I didn’t do shit,” he grunted, taking note of my stare and my heaving chest. “It’s your money, but the next trader ship from the surface won’t be due for a week. So if you destroy them all in this fit of rage, I’ll only have my personal stash left, and that’s not good enough.”
“You don’t have a personal stash,” I pointed out.
Florian stared at me slowly. “At the rate you go through them, I have to.”
I growled and turned away.
“Was the market that big a failure?”
“No,” I grunted, trying to drop it.
“So you tracked them, and we have the proof we need to toss them in the dungeons?” Florian cackled gleefully, rubbing his hands together in anticipation of doing said tossing into dungeons.
“No.”
He stilled. “Okay, Caz, then what the fuck happened down there?”
“Nothing,” I said with a growl, picking up a pair of thick dumbbells and beginning to curl them while I stared at the blank wall in front of me.
Florian snorted. Then he waited.
And waited.
“Let’s spar,” he suggested when I kept curling the dumbbells in silence. “You’ll work out more energy that way. And you fucking need it. You’re spewing alpha power everywhere, and it’s starting to tickle.”
He said it derisively, purposefully trying to make me feel insulted and challenged, as if my power was little more than a nuisance to him. He was trying to get under my skin.
In my current state, raw and exposed, shockingly vulnerable in a way I was unprepared for, it worked. I dropped the massive dumbbells and charged at him without warning, snarling with scales rippling everywhere under my skin.
My dragon was taking over again.
Did he think he could challenge us here, get the better of us? Did he think we would cave and let him have her? Nobody could have her! Nobody but me. She was mine.
Florian was ready and waiting for us. We collided heavily, his blond hair whipping around his head as he tried to take me to the ground, where his superior wrestling skills would provide a good match to my strength.
Which is why I didn’t let it happen. I countered his move by wrenching my body over faster than expected and then pulled him with me. Florian left his feet in a blur, and I let go, tossing him ten feet into the air to slam down onto the mat.
“It’s like that, is it?” he said, bouncing to his feet and closing the gap between us in a blur, going for my knees.
My dragon snarled its fury as I dropped dual elbows into his back, leveling him face-first into the floor. He hit hard but didn’t pause as he rolled onto his back. Pulling his knees to his chest, he kicked out.
I was already reaching for his throat, and the agility of the move caught me by surprise. Now it was my turn to hurtle through the air—straight up and then straight down into the waiting punch that clobbered me. I bounced off the ground, rolling awkwardly.
“Orb be damned, what the fuck has gotten into you?” Florian snarled, wiping blood from his mouth as I scrambled to my feet with a dragon-throated growl, my eyes burning bright as my dragon pushed forward.
“I think you broke one of my teeth. If you’re this worked up, let me call one of the attendants for once in your life! You need to take some pressure off, Caz, before you kill someone. This is …”
But I didn’t hear what else he had to say. I had heard nothing after his suggestion to call one of the attendants, one of the women who would gladly do whatever I asked. A chance to lie with the ice tyrant was not something any of them would pass up. They would gladly help “relieve my pressure.”
My dragon, restrained since my last shout as I shut down its argument, surged back to the fore, renewed in its fervor. No woman would touch me. No woman but her.
Our mate.
Red colored my vision as I charged at Florian, losing all semblance of control at the suggestion that any woman but her would be good enough for me.
That any woman but her was to touch me like that ever.
Only her. Whatever it took, she would be the only one.
And I hated anyone who even considered otherwise.
Who thought they could split us up. Take her for themselves. She was …
“Mine!” I howled, deep in the bloodlust of a freshly awakened mate bond.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” he yelped, dodging aside as I swiped at his face, claws emerging from my hand. The tip of one just nicked his chin, drawing a thin line of blood.
A blast of ice slammed into me, knocking the wind from my lungs as it pressed me against the wall, pinning me there.
“I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with you today, but when you cool off and are ready to apologize for being an asshole, come find me. Not before,” Florian snarled from the other side of the ice wall he’d built, breaking the “rules” of sparring to do so.
He’d done it to stop me. To stop me from going over the top, from losing my cool. From hurting him for wanting nothing more than to help. I was an idiot. That was my best friend, one of my only friends, and I had lost it on him. He didn’t even know she existed, how could he try to take her?
I’d fucked up with both of them now. At least this one I could fix right now. Besides, I had to tell someone.
Florian was already headed for the exit, not looking back.
“Ri. Wait,” I called, the hurt behind his words still stinging, helping keep me grounded enough to contain my monster. “I’m sorry.”
Florian paused. Then he slowly turned back, eyeing me with wary distaste. I didn’t enjoy it.
“This doesn’t leave this room,” I said, reaching out and touching the ice, pulling at it with a mental command. The barrier disappeared as I absorbed its power into me and walked toward him. It had never been meant to stop me, only delay me and allow me time to recover. “Got it?”
I waited until he nodded, the dull glare remaining in his eyes. He was still mad. And I couldn’t blame him. I was on edge, snapping at the slightest thing.
“I’m sorry.” It was worth repeating. He deserved it. “It’s not you. It’s me. I’m way on edge.”
“Why?”
I sighed. Here went nothing. I had to get it out there.
“I think I found my mate this morning. Somehow.”
Florian turned back to me fully now, his jaw hanging in shock.
Shit, I had busted one of his teeth after all.
“You did? Where is she?” he asked, looking around, as if he could have missed another person in the small gym. “No, forget that. Who is she?”
“I don’t know,” I growled, clenching my fists. “I left her there.”
“Left her … your fated mate? You left your fated mate?” He gaped before shaking his head, eyes narrowing. “Wait. You left her where?”
“At the market.” My dragon snarled angrily, protesting and wanting even now to spread its wings and go back to her.
“Your fated mate is the elite we’ve been tracking?” Florian cursed. “Shit. That’s bad. Who was it then? Was it Damon’s daughter or something?”
“No.” I gritted my teeth. My mate being the daughter of one of my biggest detractors would have been easier. Not better but easier. She was one of the elites, at least. If nothing else, it would make more sense.
It was hard to say out loud. It sounded stupid. It was stupid. How could I have done something like this, something so idiotic.
Because it was impossible.
“Then who?” he pushed, growing tired of my reticence. “Tell me she wasn’t one of the slavers.”
I shook my head. “She’s one of the grounded. I saw her in a cage.”
And I left her there. The guilt was overwhelming. I had left my mate, the other half of me, in a cage. I had all but run away. A low rumble filled the room. Only an arched eyebrow from Florian clued me in that I was making the noise, my anger seeping past my normally steel-clad control.
“Your mate is a clippy?” he hissed in stunned surprise. “But that’s impossible. They don’t have mates. They’re too weak for that.”
I snarled, fury at the denial of my mate bond surging through me once more. “Are you saying she isn’t my mate?”
Florian, recognizing what was happening, backed up in a hurry and bowed his head in slight submission. “Not at all, Alpha. Calm. I’m just shocked, trying to process it. And you left her.”
“Careful,” I growled, growing tired of the reminder. My dragon simmered in the background, still angry over it all.
“Why did you leave her there?” he asked, rubbing his chin.
“Besides it being impossible that I’m mated to one of the grounded?
” I asked rhetorically. “Because I didn’t know what to do.
I can’t bring her into my world. A wing-clipped among elite true dragons?
Come on, Ri, you know that has mega-disaster written all over it.
If Damon knew or, orb-forbid, my uncle?”
Florian grunted in acknowledgment, but I could see he was still trying to process it.
I didn’t blame him. Just saying it sounded insane.
But I didn’t voice my true fear. That I wouldn’t be able to protect her.
That I would slip, and she would get hurt in an “accident.” That I would lose her because of the deadly games the elite loved to play in their lust for power.
That was why I didn’t want to bring her here.
But I couldn’t go around nearly tearing off the heads of everyone either.
But if you bring her here, she’ll eventually find out what you did. You can’t hide it forever. Not from a fated mate.
I shoved that stray thought deep down inside of me, burying it under a mile of ice.
“What did you come find me for?” I asked, desperate for a change of topic.
“Nothing important in hindsight. Just an update from the northern borders.”
I latched on to that. “More scuffles with the Red King’s forces?”
Florian nodded. “No casualties or serious injuries. But this is the fourth ‘accidental’ incursion in months. The bastard is up to something,” he finished with a frosty snarl, not needing to hide his hatred for the Red King from me. I knew the truth there.
“Agreed. We need to be ready.”
“I will be, Alpha,” Florian replied, speaking as Warlord, not my friend, before becoming casual once more. “But that’s not our concern right now.”
“What is?”
“Getting you to your mate.” He smiled broadly. “I’m not gonna win any ladies with my teeth constantly broken because you can’t keep your cool. So let’s go get her.”