Chapter 23
Twenty-Three
Anna
Caz was growing near.
My eyes popped open, and I sat up in bed. The bedroom was silent, and no noise came from outside the door either. Yet the insistence, the innate knowledge that he was getting closer pressed on me nonetheless.
These premonitions had been growing stronger ever since things between us went to the next level, but no further changes had happened. Our mate marks were growing, providing incontrovertible proof that we were meant to be together.
As if I needed more confirmation.
The pleased rumbling of my dragon in my chest echoed that sentiment while also scaring the shit out of me.
I wasn’t used to an active presence in my body.
The connection between me and her was growing stronger as well.
The increase in her activity coincided with each new mate mark that blossomed on my body.
The more I bore his marks, the stronger she became.
What would happen if I let him truly claim me and complete the mate bond? Would she come alive entirely? Would I be able to shift? I drew in a sharp breath.
Would I be able to fly one day?
It was scary. All of it. My dragon. Shifting. Mate marks. Caz.
I was falling for him. There was no point in trying to deny it any further.
Not to myself, not to him, or anyone else.
I shuddered at just how strong the pull was becoming.
Just the night before, we’d come together again, and I had almost lost control and told him to do it, to bite me and claim me fully as he fucked me.
The words had been on my tongue, hanging there while I screamed his name and writhed ever deeper into the comforts of his bed as he licked me with the same eagerness as the first, second, and third times. With him, it was like every time was new.
And it was always about me. I’d reached for him, tried to return the pleasure with my hands and my mouth, but Caz was stern on that point. The first time I touched him was when I was ready to dive in headfirst. Without holding back.
He called it the world’s longest foreplay.
I knew it had to be torturing him, but the discipline, the strength to hold himself back was impressive and attractive in its own way.
But I was losing the battle. The only thing that had stopped me from begging him to claim me the night before was that I’d come on his face before I could speak.
The euphoria that created had brought with it a new friend this time. One that hadn’t reared its head in a few days.
Guilt.
My eyes flicked to the door as a pressure increase in my mind said Caz was almost here. I still couldn’t hear him, but it didn’t matter. He would arrive soon. My dragon knew when its mate was near.
I sighed. That was the problem. My dragon was happy. Caz was happy. I could be happy, if I let myself.
But I couldn’t. Milly and Ella were still out there somewhere, suffering at the hands of an elite while I was doing nothing but receiving pleasure from one. From the elite of the elite. It wasn’t right.
I missed them. Badly.
I sat upright suddenly, a fresh thought coming to me in conjunction with the loneliness of having no friends to talk to.
For years, I had relied on Milly and Ella to help guide me. Just as they did with me. The three of us trusted one another utterly.
And without them here, I wasn’t sure if I was making a mistake. Not about Caz being my mate. There was too much proof he was, including the lines swooping across my chest that were the color of his eyes.
But just because he was my mate didn’t mean I was reading him right. I trusted my friends’ judgment. They would tell me if I was right—if Caz really wasn’t what the rumors all said or if I was letting my pussy do the thinking, blinded by the way he touched me and made me feel.
Milly would see through him in an instant. I knew that. If he was faking, she would be able to tell. It seemed hard to believe, but he could be. After all, this was a man who could have anything he wanted. Anything at all. Yet somehow, he was just as into me, as I was him.
More, even. There was no hesitation from Caz.
No holding back. He’d thrown himself into this from the second he’d come back for me.
Now he was ready to claim me the instant I asked him to, and the consequences be damned.
Not just personally, but for the entire kingdom.
Whatever they were, he wanted to face them at my side.
It was almost too good to be true.
And that leads to another thing to think about. He might be Caz to you, but he’s the ice tyrant to everyone else. You can’t forget that. You have to be sure you aren’t doing more harm than good to him by being in his life.
From what little I’d seen of him in his ice tyrant persona, life was already difficult. He sheltered me from much, but I’d picked up bits and pieces here and there. Life in the Ice Citadel was not easy, nor pleasant, for many.
The elites loved to play games, and the ice flowed downhill. Weaker elites suffered at the hands of stronger, and so on, down the chain of power. All the way to the grounded like me. Who only ever suffered.
Caz had enough problems—from elites bothering him for favors or attempting to involve him in their schemes to his own family wanting to oust him. We hadn’t seen Andrik or Mirko since the terrarium, but they were out there. Somewhere.
Introducing a mate as weak as me to his people would make things a million times harder because he would have to defend us both.
His attention would always be split. Every hallway I walked would be a danger to us both.
I could never freely stroll through the palace.
I’d have to stay in guarded areas forever.
Have I just exchanged one prison for another then?
I sat up straighter, unsure of how to answer my own question. Or, perhaps, I had already answered it, and I just didn’t like what it meant.
Because I couldn’t stay in these quarters for the rest of my life. I couldn’t do that. Caz or not, I would leave first.
The door to the bedroom flung open and Caz burst through the opening, bubbling with energy.
“Good morning,” he boomed as I clutched the blankets up around me.
“You know, it’s polite to knock,” I said, pointing at the door.
Caz grinned.
I frowned. “What if I was naked?”
Caz’s smile slowly turned wicked, and a growl formed in his chest as he eyed me up and down. “Don’t you tempt me with an even better time.”
I gathered the blankets with one hand and pointed a finger at him. “That is not what I meant, Caz.”
Now was not the time for that. Not if I was to talk to him about leaving the citadel, about how I couldn’t stay there.
“Don’t care,” he said bluntly. “It’s what I thought. I can still taste you from last night, and I want more of you. Always. So my mind is going to go there every time.”
My throat constricted at the lust in his voice. Thankfully, he frowned at me instead, shifting gears.
“You aren’t wearing my shirt anymore,” he complained, pointing at the button-up tossed at the side of the bed.
“It was dirty,” I said, going with that instead of my first response of “I like to sleep naked.”
“You look good in it.”
Was he pouting? He was definitely pouting. Damn, he was cute when he did that.
“Here,” he said, going to the row of closets on the far side of the bed and opening up one to pick out a new shirt. “You can put this on after you shower, so I can pull it off of you when I get back.”
I perked up. “Get back? Back from where? You’re leaving me alone here, with your cousin and uncle still roaming around?”
Caz’s eyes glowed green as his dragon pressed forward at the reminder of the threat to me. “Guards will be stationed at the door at all times with more close by. More than enough to deal with them. Besides, I hope not to be gone very long.”
“Where are you going?”
I wasn’t letting this slide. Not that easily. If he got to leave, I wanted to as well.
His grin returned big and broad, much to my surprise. I’d expected him to tell me that he was off on some secret ice tyrant business. Apparently not.
“That’s what I came to say. You know that little mission Dirk went off on? Well, he came back, and we may have something on Ella. We’re going to go out, and if it is her, get her back.”
He looked proud and happy.
“And you didn’t tell me?” I asked sharply, getting out of bed with a frown and turning away to grab clothes and start pulling them on.
Behind me, Caz’s dragon began happily growling away. I turned back to see him staring at me.
“Not now,” I said in that same hard tone, removing the smile from his face. “Worry about my ass later.”
“Kind of hard to do when you’re bending over in front of me like that,” he pointed out. “Makes me want to step closer and grab your hips, and—”
“You won’t be grabbing anything anytime soon,” I snapped, pulling up my pants and reaching for a sports bra.
“Have I done something wrong?” he asked, taking a half-step back to give me some space. “I thought this was a good thing.”
“It is, Caz. But you waiting to tell me is not. If you wanted me to be excited, you should have come and told me the second you found out.”
“But … that’s why I’m here?”
“No,” I said, jabbing a finger in his chest. “It isn’t. You already have a plan in place to go get her. You’ve probably got teams getting ready to go. Everyone knows what to do because you took the time to come up with that plan before you came and told me.”
“Why am I in trouble for this?” he said, throwing up both hands to show they were empty. “I’m letting you know the good news. Good news, might I remind you.”
“And that’s the problem, Caz.” I shrugged on a jacket he’d gotten me as well, along with every other item of clothing in the room. But I couldn’t let that cloud my emotions now. “You’re letting me know. Announcing it like a bulletin board for me to read and nothing more.”