Chapter 21
Twenty-One
Anna
I’m sorry.
The pain on his face as he ran was heartbreaking. He didn’t have to be ashamed. Whatever had happened wasn’t his fault, of that I was sure. But my eyes never left his back as he ran, and I couldn’t stop my emotions from overflowing, conflicting with one another.
I had been wrong earlier. So horribly wrong. What I had thought I had seen curling over his shoulders and sides in the shower wasn’t a tattoo at all.
It was scars. Lots of them. A latticework of lines crisscrossing his back in all directions.
How had one of the most powerful dragons in Hollow Earth allowed that to happen?
“Ma’am.”
Dirk coughed as I spitted him with a glare at the formality.
“You know my name, Dirk.”
He grimaced, looking down the same hallway after his brother. “I know. But Casimir is on edge right now. His dragon is riding him hard. I don’t want to come across overly comfortable with you. He might take it as a challenge.”
“Caz is gone,” I pointed out.
He had disappeared around the corner, heading in a different direction. Wherever he was going, it wasn’t back to his quarters, which is where he had ordered me sent.
“I’m not risking it,” Dirk said, shaking his head. “Caz’s dragon is …”
“The scars,” I whispered in understanding. There was no way such pain wouldn’t have affected his dragon too. “What happened to him?”
Dirk shook his head.
“What?”
“That’s not my story to tell, Anna. He’ll tell you when he’s ready. Or when you ask.”
“Hard to ask him when he’s running away from me.” I stared at the empty hallway. “Where is he going anyway?”
“The Lookout.”
I glanced at Dirk. “The what?”
“Very top of the central tower of the citadel,” he explained. “The roof. He goes there when he wants to get broody and upset. Thinks it’s his secret place. I don’t know what he calls it, but from up there, you can see everything for miles around.”
I nodded slowly. That sounded like somewhere Caz would go given the mood he was in. “Take me there.”
“What?” Dirk shook his head. “No way. I have my orders to take you back to his quarters and keep you there safely.”
“Dirk. We aren’t going to play this game,” I said, looking at him but not really seeing him. All I could picture was Caz sitting on the edge of the roof, surrounded by the gargoyles that dotted every wall. The black clouds would be gathering around him, and he would let them.
Unless I stopped him.
“Exactly. You’re going to come with me back to his quarters and make sure my ass doesn’t get in any trouble with him,” Dirk said, moving to block the corridor Caz had taken.
“How are you going to make me do that without touching me?” I said, taking a step toward him. “If Caz smells me on you …”
“Are you threatening me?” Dirk rumbled unhappily as he gave ground.
“Only if you don’t do the smart thing,” I said. “I’m going to go see him, Dirk. He needs me. I will tell him I did not play fair and threatened you so that you are in no trouble. You will be the best guard to walk me up there, ensuring I arrive unharmed.”
Dirk didn’t look happy. “This is gonna hurt,” he muttered but fell in beside me.
“What is?”
“The beating Caz is gonna give me later.” He already seemed resigned to it.
“He’s not going to give you a beating.”
“I’m disobeying a direct order.”
“No, you aren’t. I’m just altering his order. I’m his mate, which means I’m technically of his rank. So I can do that.”
Dirk snorted. “That won’t fly until you bear his bite mark.”
I fingered my shirt absently, under which the faint green line was etched. “If he tries to punish you, I will let him know that he is … making a mistake.”
“I’m sure that will go over well for both of us,” Dirk said dryly.
We began ascending stairs and kept ascending. Twice we had to change stairwells. They became narrower as well, less used.
“Through there,” Dirk said, pointing at a door. “There’s a study room. A metal staircase inside leads up to the roof itself. I’ll stay out here. It will be better that way.”
He pushed open the single door. The face was carved with a ferocious dragon head, its mouth open and ready to breathe ice across everything.
I entered the study and looked around. Two walls were covered in bookshelves. Oddly enough, each book seemed the exact same. Black, tall, and with gold writing on the spine.
A magnificent desk sat in the middle of the room. Broad and deep, it curved in an arc around the seat, a dark, plush thing with a back high enough to loom over even Caz if he sat in it.
In the corner was the staircase that Dirk mentioned, which would lead to the roof, the very top of the Ice Citadel.
I climbed it, only hesitating at the top before pushing the door open. Was I doing the right thing? Caz wanted to be alone, but this was all my fault. I had left the room without telling anyone and gotten myself in trouble. I owed it to him to apologize and do what I could to make it better.
“Caz?” I called as I pushed the door open, air blasting my hair back and out wildly. “It’s me, Anna.”
“Go back,” a dark voice growled from somewhere out of sight, the winds this high up tearing and pulling at the sound before it reached me.
I paused. His voice was different. Deeper. Harsher, but also more sibilant. Which meant …
“Are you okay? Did you shift?” I stepped out a bit more.
“I said go back!” Caz roared, and ice spread across the stony surface. “You’re in danger here.”
The ice stopped five feet clear of me, though it continued other directions, coating the surface.
“No,” I said, more firmly than I felt, not knowing what I would find out there on the roof but absolutely certain I had to go to him anyway. “I don’t think I am.”
Then, before I could stop myself, I stepped out onto the roof entirely, my hair blowing wildly.
Caz was in pain. He was hurting. And that meant I was too. I wasn’t ready to go all in, to accept his bite, and become mated, but I was no fool either. I could tell that it was going that way. That’s what fate meant. It could be fought, but it would always win in the end.
And right now, Caz needed his fated mate.
He needed me. What’s more, I wanted to do this.
I wanted to go to him, to care for him. It was like a flower suddenly blossoming, this newfound care.
Had seeing his scars really changed me that much?
Or had it simply brought down a wall I had been struggling to keep propped up?
“Leave me alone,” Caz growled, his voice coming from behind and above me.
“No,” I said, slowly pivoting on the spot until I could see him.
All of him.
A massive dragon with scales as platinum as his hair was crouched on the far side of the flat surface. Its head still towered above me, the snout easily fifteen feet or more in the air. Baleful yellow eyes glared at me, the vertical slitted pupils narrowing dangerously.
“How did you find me?” His head whipped to the door with a flex of the long neck and fresh frosty air gathered around the end of his snout. “Dirk.”
I had to stop him, and now, the malice in the way he said his brother’s name spelled trouble if I couldn’t find a way to restrain him and keep him up here with me. I didn’t fear Caz, in any form. The only thing I felt around him was safe. Even now.
But how to keep him here? First, I would have to get his attention. How did one get the attention of the ice tyrant himself?
Do something they aren’t used to dealing with.
Oh, shit. This is a bad idea. A very, very bad idea.
But it was the only one I had.
“Casimir Dvorak IV,” I barked in my best “I’m the boss” voice, even as one giant taloned paw stepped forward. “You will stop right there.”
The dragon’s head snapped back to me with terrifying speed. The giant beast growled so deeply it shook the entire rooftop. I wanted to turn and run, to flee back into the depths of the citadel as it rose up high before me, but I didn’t.
Instead, I glared at it, putting every ounce of courage I had into keeping my feet in place and not retreating or curling up into a ball. I wanted to. The beast was massive. Thick horns rose from the top of his head, a quartet of them swirling back and forth in a forest of thorny protrusions.
Teeth half as long as I was tall hung over his lower jaw, and frost billowed from nostrils the size of my head. Claws that could slice me in half pressed hard into the stone surface. I could see plenty of divots where they had literally scratched out solid stone in the past.
My skin would be paper compared to them. I should be running in terror, begging for my life and cowering on my knees before the might, the majesty of this alpha dragon.
Instead, I raised a finger and shoved it at the beast. “Enough with this. I need to see Caz. You will shift back. Now.”
Something inside me rose up as I said that, putting an unseen and unheard sort of emphasis on my words. They were infused with more power and gravitas than I could have possessed on my own.
And Caz’s dragon shuddered in response.
My jaw nearly hit the floor as it shivered once more and then bent, as if it could get any lower to the ground. Then, a second later, Caz was standing there, naked but for the mate marks like he had been in the shower as well as the terrarium when he’d saved me from Andrik.
“Much better,” I said, walking up to him.
“How did you do that?” he whispered, his eyes wide and face slack with shock. “It had a firm hold on me. I was doing everything I could not to lose total control and go feral. Then you just walked up here and point a finger at it? How?”
“I think your dragon and mine had a discussion.” I smiled, the words feeling accurate as they came. “Mine made the more persuasive argument.”
“Indeed.” He ran a hand back over his head and through his hair.
Pecs and abdominal muscles stretched with the movement even as the wind undid his efforts in a second, swirling his hair out and around his eyes, still silver-green with the pressure of his dragon. Altogether, it gave him a rather impressive naked wild-man effect.
A very-naked wild-man effect.