Chapter 20
Twenty
Casimir
I hunched against the tile as the last of my second load was swept away, erasing any evidence of my shame. My inability to be stronger.
Seeing my seed so wasted like that felt wrong now that I had a mate.
I had jerked off many times before. Many, many times.
Resisting the call of willingly given flesh was not easy, regardless of the reason behind the false desires of the various women.
The longer I’d gone without a mate, the harder it had become.
But I had. Time and again, I had not caved. I had sought refuge in the shower or tissues. Then it had seemed normal, natural.
Now my seed belonged to her. My mate. Anna. I did not want to waste a single drop of it, as if there was suddenly a limited amount. It was stupid. I knew that, and I punctuated that frustration by smashing another tile.
Damn. More repairs.
I needed to get back to the gym, and soon.
Already the antsy tingles were creeping into that little crevice between my shoulder blades.
It was made all the worse by the fact that I wasn’t with her right then.
She was with someone else. I trusted Dirk and Florian with my life.
But this was Anna’s life I was giving to them.
The thought of her with any other male, even my closest friends, was not a pleasant one.
The glass shook from my angry growl, echoed by my dragon. She was ours. Not theirs. We should be by her side at all times.
She doesn’t want that. We have to respect her wishes.
My dragon snarled wordlessly with anger, demanding to be let out, to be the one in charge. It would show us how to properly mate.
You’ve got just as much experience in this as me, buddy. Which is to say, fucking none at all. So cool it.
Finding a way to stay sane was becoming harder and harder. Made all the worse by the fact my mate didn’t want me. Yet, she had hinted, mentioning her friends first several times, but that wasn’t entirely true. I could sense the deeper discomfort the idea brought to her.
Because of me. Of who I was. Though I longed for her to think of me as Caz and nothing more, that was impossible. Her entire life, I had been this mythical person, ruler, Ice Tyrant of all the Ice Kingdom.
How was she supposed to decouple me from that image in only a matter of days? For that matter, how was I so easily able to look past who she was, what she was? Not because I cared as a person but because of what it meant, of the struggles it would bring our way when others found out.
To me, she was everything I needed. Grounded, or weak-powered, elite, it mattered not to me. My mate was my mate, and she was all the perfect I could ever want, ever ask for. I would do anything for her.
But I should probably spend more time planning for the future. When word got out about Anna, and her lack of power, there would be … trouble. I needed to be ready.
A sense of resolve strengthening me, giving me a fresh purpose, I clocked the shower over to boiling hot.
The scalding water—anathema to an ice dragon—immediately killed the resurging tingle in my cock.
I had something else to focus on, something that involved Anna, and not pining away in solitude over her but real, tangible action.
I would need Dirk and Florian. Together, we could formulate a plan, come up with all the various scenarios that would arise as word of Anna’s presence began to leak. And it would leak. Mirko would see to that. I was certain.
But I would be ready. I exited the shower, staring at myself in the mirror. Anna needed me to protect her. To keep her safe until she could come to terms with what we were to each other. Then, I could bathe in her scent, and explore …
My nose twitched.
Just thinking about Anna brought that vanilla and cinnamon combination to me, intoxicating in its intertwining flavors. That mix made her so irresistible and staying apart from her so painful. I just wanted to live in it.
I sniffed again. Her scent was potent, mixed with a slight sweetness of arousal. I knew because I scented it on her every time we were close. Her willpower was much stronger than mine because she wouldn’t even acknowledge it or let it make her weak.
And people said the grounded weren’t strong …
But why could I smell it now? This was no fantasy, no imagination. Anna had been here. In my bathroom. I spun to the shower. Had she walked in on me? I’d left the door open, figuring to be done well before she got back from her walkabout with Dirk.
Had she come back early? Found me in the shower?
A smile curled my lips up. She was turned on by the sight.
Of me. Had she heard me moaning her name?
Biting my lip with intrigue at the idea, I stole from the bathroom toward the door to my personal bedroom.
Perhaps she was in there. I would not intrude.
I had sworn an oath, but if any sound could be heard through the door, that wasn’t my fault.
Halfway down the corridor a wave of cold washed over me, heavy in its blanketing touch. I frowned. Why would I, an ice dragon, the ice dragon, feel cold like that?
A wave of pressure slammed into me afterward, spiking my heartrate. It wasn’t cold I was feeling. It was fear.
The marks on my chest began to burn.
And it wasn’t my fear.
I didn’t hesitate. I took off, following her scent as my dragon pushed forth, the world glowing with added silvery brightness at the corners of my vision. The trail was fresh and easy to follow.
The door to my personal wing shattered as I went through it, not bothering to slow down. I wasn’t going to take one second longer than necessary to get to Anna. Something bad was happening to her, and she needed me. Now.
I burst into the terrarium with a roar that shook the plants and rattled the glass in the windows. Wildlife scattered with shrieks as my dragon pushed forward, scales coating parts of my arms and body.
Barreling through the plant life, I found her cornered between two giant trees, swinging a broken branch wildly with both hands to keep her attacker at bay.
Howling my fury to the orb above, I launched myself at the one who dared threaten my mate.
I was the ice tyrant, and they would feel my wrath.
No place would be safe for them. No corner far enough to hide.
Their flesh was mine to rend from their body, and I would watch as their entrails flopped on the ground, and the life fled from their weak, quivering body.
“Mine!”
My dragon echoed the uncontrolled hatred with terrifying unity. We were one, with one purpose. One mission.
Protect.
The attacker tried to dodge, but he was too slow. Too weak. I hit him hard in the back, snapping him forward with near spine-shattering force. He flew forward, slamming off a tree and hitting the ground.
I picked him up by a leg and tossed him clear across the terrarium and through one of the ancient stained-glass windows back into the interior of the citadel. Roaring a battle cry, I leapt through after him.
Ice flowed from nowhere over my right hand, hardening and shaping itself into a pointed blade.
I drove that needle-sharp tip into the chin of Anna’s attacker, pinning him to the wall as blood dribbled down his chest from the prick of my blade.
What stared back at me was a reflection of my own fury, features torn apart by hatred and rage finally let loose.
And a bruise on his temple that I hadn’t given him.
Only one thing stopped me from driving my icy-blade right up in to his brain.
The scent of blood. My blood. Kin.
“Cousin,” I snarled with bestial hostility, not recognizing my own voice in the image of death and darkness I had become. “Your blood is the only reason I haven’t smeared your entrails along this entire wall already.”
Andrik stared up at me in raw fury at the way he had been treated by my hand. He had never seen me unleashed. Never seen the monster that lived inside me. Now he saw me not as Casimir, his cousin, but as the ice tyrant himself.
“Blood or no blood, if you so much as look at Anna again, I will paint the outside of the citadel with every drop of blood in your body for all to see. This I promise.”
I inhaled deeply, my voice still thundering in the hallway. “Do I make myself clear?”
Despite it all, Andrik didn’t yield. His hatred of me was as strong as he was. And he knew that I despised the idea of killing my own blood. As such, he was going to use it against me as he had in the past.
The difference this time was he had threatened Anna. And that tipped me over into new territory that he wasn’t ready for.
I drove the icy tip a full inch into his jaw. Blood flowed down around it, and Andrik’s eyes opened with panic.
“Nod if you understand me,” I hissed, staring directly into his eyes and letting him see that I was fully prepared to kill him if he didn’t.
He twitched. I knew what I was demanding. Glaring at me the entire time, he lifted his chin up and then brought it back down, the movement forcing him to further impale his own jaw. Fresh blood ran down the icy weapon in response.
“Leave. Now.” I pulled the blade free.
Holding one hand to his bleeding jaw, Andrik stormed off. I watched him go, waiting to be certain he was leaving. Then I shook the ice blade free, letting it fall to the ground instead of reabsorbing it, and turned back to the shattered window.
Anna awaited.
I walked back to where she was still clutching the stick, crouched low. The stick was wobbling in her hands.
“It’s okay,” I said as she whirled on me. “It’s me.”
Anna stood up slowly, and a wave of something else ran over me. Not the fear of before but heat. Warmth. I saw her eyes heading downward and her cheeks pinking as she stared.
Oh, right. The towel.
The flimsy thing hadn’t made it out of my quarters. The entire fight, my arrival, I had done it all nude, and now I was fully alert, blood pumping from the battle lust. And my cock was hard as steel once more, pointing right at her while my chest heaved.
Her nipples poked through the thin top she was wearing, and my dick strained at her harder.
Shit, shit, shit.
Her sweet honey smell was filling the air. It was nearly unbearable to my dragon as it thrashed against the cage of my mind, demanding to be set free. My fangs were sliding down of their own accord, the urge to mate with her incredible.
Except she didn’t want it.
A clatter of noise announced the arrival of others, Dirk at their head.
“I want guards posted at my chambers, and in here. Twenty-four-seven,” I snarled, thick with alpha command. “Get this window replaced. Quadruple her personal guard, and do not touch her. At all.”
Dirk skidded to a halt in shock at my use of such a tone at him. But he knew something must have happened and was smart enough not to argue.
“Right away.” He turned and started snapping out his own alpha commands to the other guards.
“I’m sorry,” I mouthed at Anna as I started to back away.
I wanted to go to her, to comfort her and tell her everything was fine, that she was safe now. But I couldn’t. Despite the signs of her body, I couldn’t be near her at all just then.
Because I could see the other reaction in her eyes.
Fear.
Fear of me. Of who I was and what I had just done.
I’m sorry.
Then I turned and fled. I told myself it was because I was on the verge of shifting, of my monster escaping its cage, but that wasn’t true at all.
I ran because deep down, I knew I was never going to be good enough for her. I could never shed who I was. And seeing my mate scared of me was the most crippling thing I had ever been through. I had to run from her, to get away.
Because if the monster did get out, I would never see her again.