Chapter 9
Nine
Anna
“You’re safe now. You can relax,” Caz said as we finally landed back on the solid footing of a balcony somewhere, the hood of his cloak somehow still in place.
I peeled away from him as fast as I could, grateful to be out of his arms and able to see once more.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t enjoyed flying. That part had been amazing.
The rush of wind on my face and through my hair, the absolute freedom of simply soaring through the air, unencumbered by the need to travel in a line.
Yes, that was it, the freedom of it all.
That was exhilarating. I missed it already, longed for it back, angry at yet another thing my status as a clippy had robbed me of.
But the reason I stepped back, far back was to be able to breathe air that wasn’t thick with his musk. If I didn’t get off him now, I would be getting off on him. My pussy was positively dripping.
I was certain Caz could smell my arousal, and I needed to create a firebreak between us so my body didn’t betray just how right he was. How safe I felt in his arms. Like nothing mattered but him. But us.
The instant I had walked into his arms back at the market, his biceps and that damn scent of his had invaded every pore of my skin, sucked in through every orifice like my body was a desiccated mummy, and the only thing that could revive me was him.
Even his alpha power, when some of it leaked through, didn’t push me down to the ground like the oppressive fist it usually was.
Instead, it wrapped me up and comforted me.
His strength soothed me like the aloe to a sunburn I hadn’t known was there.
His touch, his simple presence, it all served to calm me, to make every worry, every fear, far less potent.
Because he would keep me safe. I clenched against a near feral desire to throw myself at him, to be taken to the ground and finally see just what the bulge beneath his pants looked like in my hands.
I wanted to know what he tasted like, what he felt like, driving home inside of me as I rode him until the very end.
Fucking hell. You’re losing your damn mind, Anna. Get a grip. You’re stronger than this. Remember, Milly and Ella are missing because of him! Not to mention he left you in a cage.
I hissed their names, saying them out loud while latching on to that inescapable fact. My friends were gone.
“Ella, Milly,” I moaned, pushing my hair back out of my face with both hands. “Fuck.”
“Your friends,” Caz grunted. “Those are their names.”
I nodded. “I have to find them, Caz. I have to. Please, we need to do something.”
Going back was out of the question. Even as Caz had taken me into the sky, I had looked down.
The last thing I’d seen before burying my face in his chest was a mob of hunters pouring out onto the rooftops, watching us as we fled into the early morning light, the orb far above in the rocky ceiling of Hollow Earth only just beginning to pulse with faint yellows and oranges.
I even noticed a tinge of pink as it fell over the city.
“We’ll find them,” Caz told me. “I promise you.”
“How?”
A dragon shifter stepped into my field of vision as I stared out at Kylma, capital city of the Ice Kingdom. I backed toward Caz at the sudden appearance of the man I’d only seen once before.
He had blond hair that caught the glowing orb’s light spectacularly, throwing off shades of gold and brass as he moved.
Thick of jaw and cheek, he was very attractive in a masculine way, but it wasn’t anything like what peeks I’d gotten of Caz, who as far as I could tell was gorgeous under the cloak that somehow remained in place.
Stop it.
“Ri,” Caz said, addressing the other shifter, who nodded respectfully. “I need you to go back to the market. Shut it down. Round up every prisoner.”
The other man nodded sharply, his blue eyes tracking Caz with a focus that went beyond mere respect. “Of course. You want them imprisoned elsewhere?”
Caz shook his head. “No. I want them brought here.”
Ri’s eyebrows rose. “Here. All of them?”
“Yes. Every prisoner. Treat them well, ensure they are fed, whatever they need.”
“It shall be done. I’ll take Kolar’s squad. They’re already out training below.” Ri glanced at me and then back at Caz, who instinctively had swayed a few inches closer to me, blocking Ri’s path. “And the hunters?”
Caz grunted. “You know my feelings on them if they get in the way.”
Ri’s eyes positively glowed bright silvery-white from his dragon.
“There are too many of them,” I interjected with a protest, not wanting to see him hurt. Did he have any idea how many hunters were there? He was one man.
“I’ll be fine, miss, I promise,” he said gently, his eyes landing on me.
Something rumbled in the back of Caz’s throat, and he stepped fully in front of me, blocking the view.
“Enough,” I said, shoving Caz to the side. “You said I’m safe. Act like it.”
The other man coughed into his hand abruptly but not so quick I didn’t catch the quirk of his lips. “By your leave then,” he said to Caz and dove off the balcony without another word.
I ran to the edge, terrified, only to see him soaring away, thick white wings sprouting from beneath his shoulders to carry him smoothly to the ground below.
“Wow,” I whispered, watching the smoothness and ease with which this Ri shifted again as he landed, his wings disappearing as he walked.
I vaguely knew of the strength and the confidence in one’s ability it took to do such a thing, and he had done it like it was normal.
I had seen dragon shifters take a full minute to assume their beast form.
Stronger ones could do it smoother and faster but nothing like what I’d witnessed with Caz at the market or Ri just now.
Who were these people? What the hell had I gotten myself into.
“I told you,” Caz said as he stepped up slightly behind and beside me. “Everything will be okay now.”
I shifted to the left, keeping a gap between us.
Even this close was too much. My first thoughts were how the balcony wall was the perfect height for him to bend me over.
That if I just pushed my hips a little, they would thrust my rear out at him, giving Caz a sight he would be hard-pressed to resist.
“You haven’t found them yet,” I said, fighting against the urge to present myself to him. To my mate. Inside, my dragon was howling, mad with desire to let him mount us and claim us as his own.
Not happening. So cool it.
She pouted, angry and petulant, like a child. Which made perfect sense. She’d awoken yesterday. It was going to take time for us to learn to coexist.
Caz’s eyes glowed bright green as his dragon pressed forward. When he spoke, his words were a promise, a vow he made to me. “But I will.”
“How can you be so sure of yourself?” I asked, still not looking over at him. Doing so would open me up to his eyes. Those damnable green eyes that locked on to me and never flicked away.
And I hated how much I wanted that, how my body soaked up his undivided attention. I didn’t want to preen for him. I would not preen for him.
“Because I always get what I want,” he grunted, sounding not at all like a braggart but rather … irritated.
Well, I could help with that. Because he was not getting me after leaving me to rot in the marketplace.
Not for my dragon or my body’s lack of want, though. They most certainly did want to be gotten. To be pinned down onto the bed, unable to move as he lowered his powerfully muscled body onto us, one hand holding our wrists above our head. The other touching … torturing.
Fuck. I was already growing wet at the idea, my pussy swelling with unsatisfied demands once more.
“So I guess you didn’t want me earlier,” I managed to say instead of something nearly feral with lust.
To avoid looking at him, I stared upward at the cavernous ceiling far, far above, watching the orblight filter down, brightening the city bit by bit.
“What?”
“You know, when you left me. In a cage.”
Caz was silent. “I already told you. I … freaked out. Okay? There. I wasn’t at the market looking for a mate. I didn’t think I was ready. Certainly not—”
He cut himself off, but it was too late. I knew what he’d meant.
“Certainly not … certainly not what? Not a clippy in a cage?” I scoffed, mocking him angrily as I finally looked at him, meeting his green eyes with a glare. “Well, guess what. I’m a dirty, broken clippy, Caz. Sorry to disappoint you.”
The snarl that ripped from his throat made the very air around us vibrate with his anger. “Do not speak about yourself that way. Nothing about you is dirty, and I will never find you that way.”
Alpha power poured off him in waves as he stared at me. Far more of it than he’d ever let show before. I heard shouts from the courtyard below. Glancing down, I saw several shifters folding to one knee. Even Ri, who was addressing a group of them, seemed to be straining to stay upright.
“I don’t care about what you are,” Caz ground out in the silence that followed, not bothering to rein in his power.
Instead, he let it flow out, let me feel it all, every bit of him as he unveiled it in full. He cast back the hold he had on it, and on his cloak, at long last to let me truly see him for the first time.
I stared at the glorious face of my supposed mate.
The long, lean lines of his face, highlighted by the brilliant platinum-silver shock of hair tumbling down in perfect waves from his head.
The vivid green eyes I’d already fallen in love with living under a pair of bushy eyebrows that perfectly framed the rest of his face, cut with lines from a diamond edge.
He was stunning, and he was also flattening every shifter around with the display of power, such as I had never felt or suspected possible from one of our kind. Whoever he was, Caz was someone important, and he couldn’t hide that anymore
He was also insanely strong. I’d never felt alpha power like this. Even the elite from the market earlier was nothing compared to him.
Unfortunately for Caz, all unleashing it did to me was make me feel bathed in soothing comfort. It certainly suggested he was my mate. Everything I knew about a mate bond said his power was meant to protect me, never to hurt.
“But you did care,” I pointed out, struggling to get back on topic while staring at him. “You left me there to make a fool of myself because of what I was.”
“You’re misremembering,” he said stiffly. “Mostly. It was a shock, yes. But … I came to my senses.”
There was more to that story, for sure, but now wasn’t the time.
“Misremembering?” I said, making my disbelief very, very clear. I crossed my arms over my chest and waited for him to explain.
“Yes. Because I can’t just think about myself.”
I rolled my eyes. “Is this where you tell me that it’s us now because we’re fated mates? Cute, but it won’t work.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Well, it is, but that isn’t what I was thinking of. I was meaning that others will care what you are.”
“Others? So? What does that matter? They aren’t mated to me.”
You are. I didn’t say it, but I certainly thought it.
Caz looked like he’d bitten into a rotten fruit.
“It matters a lot for me, unfortunately.” He sighed.
“But I did come back for you, Anna. And I will never run from you. Ever again. I swear this. No matter how difficult it gets, if you want me, I will be there. I do not want to risk losing you again.”
I licked my lips nervously.
“And I will find your friends for you. I will have the market scoured. I will search long and far if they are gone. I will use every ounce of my power to have them brought to my home and cared for.” He gestured behind him.
I turned for the first time to look at his home. I’d been too preoccupied with the panorama of the city to notice.
The balcony we were on didn’t grant me much help.
The tall, arched doorway bespoke money, as did the furnishing in the room behind.
A lot of money, I revised a second later.
But a large overhanging roof prevented me from seeing much more.
I turned back to the city, trying to figure out where we were.
We were high up. That was the first thing I really, truly noticed. In fact, we were very high up.
A sudden weight pressed onto me. There were very few tall buildings in Kylma. I looked out over the city and the lands beyond, trying to triangulate my position. Very few buildings, and I was fairly certain it could only be one.
But that was even more impossible than my dragon awakening.
“This is your home?”
He nodded.
“As in, you live here. You own it?”
Another slow nod.
“What did you say your name was?” I hissed through clenched teeth.
Caz sighed. “Caz.”
“What is your full name?” I asked through a giant lump in my throat, the pieces starting to finally fall into place about everything I’d seen or heard.
“My full name is Casimir Dvorak IV,” he said stiffly, resignation in his tone. “And this is the Ice Citadel.”
I knew that name. Every dragon shifter knew that name.
Casimir Caz Dvorak.
Ice Tyrant, and ruler of the Ice Kingdom. As in, the entire fucking kingdom.
And my dragon thought he was our mate.