6. This Too Shall Pass
SOUNDTRACK: The Death of Peace of Mind by Bad Omens
~ VOSKI ~
I tore through the woods, heedless of direction, my only thought to run, to get away, to flee. The noise in my head was nothing short of terrifying, the contents of a jar, shaken and rolled, clattering, and impossibly jumbled.
My dragon.
My mother.
Kham’s mate.
My father.
My mate.
Home.
The unattainable heights.
Great, noble estates.
Small, dark spaces.
The slick, heated flesh of pleasure.
The cold, damp skin of fear.
Every flash of color or sound, every surge of need, every shrieking fear only pushed my feet faster, until I was certain I could outrun God Himself.
Branches whipped at my skin, tore at my clothes, caught my hair so that I screamed thinking my father had caught me. The darkness of night descended, turning trees into angry guards, and the rustling wind into a woman’s sigh of pleasure.
I ran blindly. Terrified. Enraged. Carrying my twelve-year-old self away from the dangers in my mind, and the capable Furyknight into battle with my flesh.
I ran and ran, until my legs were lead and my lungs threatened to explode.
And still I ran.
Then something—a root? A stump? My father’s hand?—caught my toe and I pitched straight down, tasting dirt, dried pine needles, and half-rotted leaves. And when the world stopped moving, when my aching lungs coughed and my head sang, I rolled onto my back to find my dragon staring down at me.
I thought I was hallucinating—the dragons were consumed in their mating!
—until Kham blew out a snort of damp, hot breath over me and I felt that telling prickle in my skin.
When I inhaled, his vapor filled my lungs, and the panic eased to a chittering anxiety that kept my heart pounding, but no longer threatening to burst from my chest.
‘Thank you.’ I sent the words because I doubted I could speak. My throat was raw and stinging. My body limp with exhaustion. Yet, the urge to keep running was there.
And the urge for something else, as well.
Kham rumbled, and I felt the earth vibrate under me as I pushed to sit up, my chest still heaving.
My legs actually shook.
My fingers trembled visibly when I sat forward and lifted a hand to push back my hair.
‘Did you trip me?’ I asked suddenly, remembering that sense that something had caught my toe—the root of a tree? Or the tip of a dragon’s tail?
‘I tried to speak, but you didn’t hear. You were a rabbit running from a wolf, straight for a cliff. Blind to your own self-destruction.’
I tried to huff a good-natured laugh, as I usually would when Kham used that warning tone, but that wisdom skirted too close to the truth. Inhaling quickly only made me cough. I hacked and wheezed like an old man. And even when my tender throat was clear, my voice remained hoarse.
‘That didn’t answer my question,’ I sent dryly. ‘Did you—’
‘I left my mate asleep, and she calls to me, even in her rest. Do not make me remain to watch you like a child, Goldfinger.’
I winced at his use of my dragon name. He rarely called me that because he knew how much I hated it.
My reputation among Furyknights was that I didn’t fail.
That everything I touched turned to gold.
Kham and I both knew that wasn’t the true understanding of my name—it would more rightly be translated, Held in the Treasured Hand of God.
But that was a mouthful. Once my brothers heard the poorly translated, short version, then watched me escape a handful of alarming circumstances without a scrape, the whispers began.
But Kham knew that. He’d used the name as a sharp reminder of my purpose. I nodded, heart trilling nervously, and cleared my throat. ‘Thank you,’ I sent again. ‘Return to your mate. And congratulations,’ I added, trying not to let bitterness creep into my tone.
Kham had already begun to turn, but he hesitated, then fixed one eye on me. ‘A mate is a gift. A divine blessing. Only a fool would resist her.’
‘Then call me a fool. I’m happy for you, and I pray you’ll have hatchlings soon, Kham. I really do. But Grace is… she’s…not for me. I’ll never take a mate.’
His gaze sharpened. ‘She’s a gift.’
‘She’s a weapon. I refuse to fall to her.’
‘Fall? Voski, your mate isn’t the enemy. She won’t defeat you. She’ll increase you.’
‘The only thing that woman will increase is my sense of impending doom.’
Kham went very still then, his eye narrowing as he stared at me.
I hated it when he examined me that way, as if he could see through skin and bone to reveal my very soul. Which, he could, with the bond. But I could see the inside of him, as well. My dragon was wise, and hilarious, and didn’t suffer foolishness—most especially from me.
But he also found human needs and fears baffling.
I raised my chin and faced him down. He was a dragon. He didn’t understand that human females weren’t the same. And that we couldn’t see into each other’s minds and hearts the same way he and Koa would now be able to.
‘You harm her by your denial.’
‘She harms me with her lies—she followed me here, Kham. Do you understand what that means? I saw her sneaking in the secret chambers of the castle in Fyrehold. She isn’t who she says she is.’
‘And you hid yourself from her, just as she hid from you.’
‘I was hiding to help.’
‘Perhaps she did the same?’
I scoffed. ‘I love your willingness to see the good in others. But you are woefully ill-prepared for the wiles of a human woman.’
‘Or you are woefully swift to assume ill-intent. You might consider how your assumptions of her character would hurt if they were another’s, turned against you.’
He encouraged me to be careful with the hearts of others, yet refused to be careful with mine?
Kham’s eye flashed and he took a single, swift step closer, caution and warning flooding through the bond. ‘Do not turn your dark fears against me. I have proven my love for you.’
I backed off, raising my hands in an attitude of surrender, at the same time I lowered my chin. ‘I’m sorry. I’m… I’m not myself. I’m shaken, Kham. My head spins. My heart won’t slow. You said I was a rabbit—I shouldn’t have been so quick to deny it.’
‘Your fear is worrisome. I know this pricks where your heart is tender. But that’s why I’m here. You know me. You know I’m safe. And I can see my mate’s heart. She chose Grace for her sweet abandon, and bold heart for adventure. She is your mirror, Voski. She will bless you—’
‘You are the first to remind me that our hearts can be turned. Just because we were made to be good, or strong, or something else, doesn’t mean we’ll become it!’
‘That’s true. But my mate is her full self. And she chose Grace.’ He hesitated again, but this time lowered his head so his snout was even with my chest. He stepped closer more softly this time, blowing another breath over me.
I inhaled sharply, but it was impossible to ignore the healing of my dragon’s breath. My heart slowed a hair and some of the exhaustion from the run eased away.
It didn’t remove my fear. But helped me think more clearly.
Which Kham knew. And the fucker used it against me.
‘She was brought to you, at this time, for a purpose—yours, and hers. Koa and I are unified, we accept the bond, and it is… astounding,’ he said, sounding as close to awed as I’d ever heard him.
It touched something within me, some soft place that I liked to keep hidden.
Made me swallow a sudden lump in my throat.
Dragons didn’t smile, but I felt Kham’s delight as he thought of his newfound mate.
‘She is made for me, Voski. It is a joy you cannot appreciate until you embrace it. But hear me: When you find the One, when you accept her, she’ll add to you, not remove from you.
Except, perhaps, for this fear? Perhaps the Creator brings your mate to offer comfort and soothing and to cut out the specter of your past—’
‘Or slit my throat in my sleep? No, thank you, Kham.’
My dragon growled again and weaved on his feet, shaking his head like a dog, as if he’d shake off a weight. ‘Stubborn, stubborn heart.’
‘Realistic,’ I corrected him. ‘Didn’t you say wisdom was found in dealing with the world as it is, rather than how you wish it would be?’
He snorted again to show his distaste for that thought. But even though I felt his reprimand, the thought of letting her close to me, of sleeping near her, of needing her the way I needed Kham, set my heart pounding again.
‘Voski—’
‘Stop, Kham. Please,’ I begged my dragon, pressing one hand to my chest and rubbing the ache there. I wanted to shake my head like he had, to force off the racing thoughts and shrieking doom. But I couldn’t. He understood that—of everyone, he understood.
It was both a relief and a weight when he stopped talking and sighed heavily. But he was the best male I knew.
Without another word, he stepped forward, pressing the broad, flat plane of his nose against my chest, and breathing over me again.
I gulped at the air, begging for the healing it could bring, trembling when it only eased the physical pain of my exhausted body, yet barely touched the heightened senses and shrieking alarm of my mind.
Swallowing the panic back, I rubbed his nose, reaching up to scratch behind his eye-ridges, whispering my gratitude. Because, a black-widow Grace might be, but my dragon was a blessing from God, and I would never deny that.
I wouldn’t be here without him.
‘Remember that,’ he assured me. ‘You didn’t feel so grateful for my wisdom at the time—and yet, now we agree, do we not?’
I let my lips twist in combined apology and frustration.
Kham had found and chosen me the day I’d determined to kill myself. And as much as I’d loved him from the first moment we linked, he’d had to wage war against my inner demons to keep me alive, for months.
‘Yes. But this wouldn’t be the first time you were wrong,’ I teased. We both knew Kham was rarely wrong. About anything. Which was disconcerting, and sent my heart spinning into a corkscrew of fear and—
Shit.
‘You should go,’ I admitted. ‘This won’t stop soon. I just have to ride it out.’
‘Or, you could embrace it?’