Chapter 42
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KATALENA
As soon as the words left my mouth, Zovai had me pinned to the bed, cock still filling me to the brim. “Say that again,” he growled. “Right now.”
His eyes were gold, beast fully in control. An ancient gaze filled with power.
“Mark me, mate.”
“Fucking stars. You need to tell me if you’re not sure, Lena, because?—”
I grabbed his face once more and made him look at me. Coming face to face with my mortality had shaken them, but I wasn’t doing it because of that. I was doing it because I was sure. There was already no going back, and while I was here in front of all dragonkind I wanted to go all the way. If there was anything I could do to heal the rift between our peoples, I would do it.
And more than that, I simply wanted them. I wanted to feel them and know that I belonged for them forever. Without question. That nothing would change it, no matter what happened.
“I am sure. More than sure. Mark me. Make me yours. All of you.”
Zovai shifted, his head moving to the larger form of his dragon, and before I could speak another word his fangs closed on my shoulder and pierced me with fire.
It hurt, and it didn’t. Tore me to shreds and melted me back together. I felt him like an echo. Need so stark and brutal it felt like being set aflame. If I’d had any doubt, this would have erased it.
He brushed a thumb over where he’d bitten. His jaws were large enough in his dragon form punctures to be on both sides of my shoulder. And him touching it felt like when he used his flames. “Different,” he said. “Beautiful.”
“What?” I glanced at my shoulder and smiled. It looked like the scars of the traitors, but not. It wasn’t cool-toned and shimmering, instead a richer blood red. Like the color of Zovai’s scales drifted across my skin like flames or ink, connecting the marks of his teeth.
I kissed him, pulling him down to me until I couldn’t breathe. Z’s weight lifted off me, my mate landing beside me with a soft thud because Endre was there with golden eyes. He smirked, but his eyes devoured. “Remember, you have to share.”
Zovai laughed. A free sound I’d never heard before. “Don’t take too long. I don’t think I’ll ever have enough.”
Endre’s mouth came down hard on mine, and he slid into my body with an ease I didn’t think was possible. Already I was getting more used to them. Just being fucked helped. I could get used to this—being pleasured by dragons.
I giggled. Helena and Taia would have a fit if they knew.
“Something funny, mate?”
“Only the idea of what everyone in Rensara would say if they knew a dragon’s cock was inside me.”
Endre purred, thrusting harder. “I think that’s the first time you’ve said that word out loud, and I expect to hear it more often.”
“Cock?” I tipped my hips up toward his. “I don’t know. It’s not a word a princess should say. I might have to be careful.”
He smiled down at me, never faltering. The relentless rhythm drew pleasure deep into me, and even the pain and soreness from so much sex so fast wasn’t enough to overcome it. “You’re a dragon princess now, Lena. No need to worry about those expectations anymore. And we will teach you to be filthy.”
In one movement he took my arm, shifted, and bit down. Pleasure and pain in a nova. The biggest bonfire I’d ever seen or felt. Endre’s echo joined. The darkness and anger I felt swirling beneath everything, raging at the Elders and what they’d done to him. The mark on my skin was whiter than his scar, and it shimmered with oranges and reds. Not blues. The color matched his body and not his form.
The bond connecting sent us both over the edge. His heat filled me, cock jerking with the force of his pleasure. They were right. Feeling him come through our bond made it so much better. Made my own orgasm sharper. There had to be a limit, right? To how good sex could be? Or was an infinite climb into the heavens as you learned what your body was capable of?
“I love you, mate.” The words kissed my lips before he did, the truth of his statement ringing in the space between our souls.
It was only because Sirrus growled that Endre pulled away. It would be a while before any of us would have enough. Maybe they were wrong—maybe doing this before the party tonight hadn’t been the best idea. Not because of the bond, but because I had absolutely no desire to do anything else but be with them until I physically couldn’t take them anymore.
Sirrus pulled me down to the edge of the bed, lifting my legs upward. “Where should I mark you?” He mused. “Make your pretty skin mine.”
The gleam in his eye had me opening my mouth to speak. I never got that far. He shifted and bit down on my thigh, jaws stretching down to my ankle as he slid home. The explosion of the mating bond along with him filling me up nearly made me pass out. All three of them blended together inside me in a haze of love and amazement. They were mine.
Mine.
Tears blurred the world because even in my wildest imaginings, I’d never had this. Nothing that was truly my own and no one else’s. Not even when I was meant to marry. But they were mine and always would be.
Pale blue now swirled around my leg in a gorgeous mark.
Every movement of Sirrus’s cock felt incredible. There was no way I would fall over the edge again right now, especially after they had managed to get more out of me than I thought I was capable of. But I didn’t care. All I wanted was to be theirs.
He came hard, nearly collapsing on top of me, lips finding mine. “I feel you everywhere,” he murmured.
The harmonious blend of them inside my chest was impossible to describe. But I immediately pitied those who could not experience it. To be wrapped up so close with someone who loved you wasn’t something I would ever take for granted.
When he rolled to the side he pulled me with him, and Endre fit himself against my back. “This will make them even more angry, won’t it?”
“I certainly hope so.”
Turning over to face Endre, I ran my hands over his skin. “They can’t touch me anymore, but that doesn’t mean they can’t hurt you, right?”
“They won’t.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You’ve convinced me. Truly. My confidence knows no bounds.”
All three of them laughed, but he leaned in and kissed my cheek. “There’s not much more they can do to me, Princess. We’ll be all right. It’s more important that they can’t touch you.”
Disquiet still bubbled beneath my skin, but they knew what we were up against. If they believed it, so would I.
Sighing, I snuggled down between them. “I don’t want to sleep, but I also don’t want to move.”
“Good,” Zovai said from where he lounged somewhere behind me. “None of us want you to leave this bed, and we have plenty of time.”
In my chest, I felt how true it was. They wanted me here. They wanted me everywhere.
They wanted me.
The dress I wore was scandalous.
Not nearly as revealing as the trap Soza had sprung on me, but still daring. It bared my shoulders and bore slits in the skirt so the mating marks were visible. Mostly gold threaded through with bits of violet, blue, and orange, it made nods to both that dress and the idea of fire. It also framed my necklace, hanging just above my breasts, perfectly.
Belleo knew what she was doing.
Without Helena, my hair was the mess it always was, but I brushed it and left it long so it flowed over my shoulders. They loved my hair, and I didn’t care about anyone else’s reaction. Only theirs.
Outside the sun was already falling, and my mates were nowhere to be found. So I decided to explore this house we’d crashed into last night. I assumed it was where they lived when they were here in Doro Eche. I didn’t care where we stayed as long as we were together, but from the little I’d seen, I already knew why they preferred the mountains.
It was quieter. A stillness to the air that didn’t feel like a city. Every window I looked out showed me beautiful trees and flowers. Wherever we were in Doro Eche, it was secluded.
I knew where the bath was, and the bedroom. As I explored, there were more bedrooms and an entire room dedicated to clothes I couldn’t imagine them wearing. They were too rough for such finery.
The room I stopped in was a library.
Much smaller than the ones in Rensara or Skalisméra, but beautiful. Large windows looking to the west and capturing the evening light. Comfortable chairs and more than enough shelves for Zovai to push me up against if he wanted to do that again.
In my chest there was a pulse of curiosity. My hand flew to my skin, the rest of me needing a moment to catch up. Would I ever be used to that? I didn’t know. The connection between us didn’t seem to point to location, though it was stronger the closer together we were. It was emotions and sensations, but not words.
My reaction brought pleasure and delight, and there was still curiosity. I’d tell them about it later when I saw them.
The library in Skalisméra had been so large it was intimidating. This one felt better. I wandered through the shelves, picking out some human texts I’d read and some I hadn’t. Plenty of books weren’t in the common language. And some of them were in a script I’d never seen before.
Rounding a shelf, I came to a stop. The wall I hadn’t looked at when I entered. Near the door. On it hung a painting so large it almost looked like it was rendered on the wall itself. Beautiful and lifelike. It painted a picture of war I hadn’t seen.
A town in the foothills of some mountains, some of the buildings already burning. People were running for their lives, but with the mountains at their backs, there was nowhere for them to go. So they were risking themselves by fleeing past the dragons who were attacking.
The town and people were ensconced in some sort of mist, making them hazy and hard to see. And in front of them was a white dragon. Not quite white. There was black there, too. Mottled and rolling over its scales. The power flowed from him as he stood against the other dragons with wings flared.
A second later, I noticed the red and blue dragons in the sky, also facing off against the horde of dragons approaching.
“I wondered if you’d find this,” Endre said softly, leaning against the doorframe.
I felt more than saw the way his eyes dragged up my body in appreciation of what I wore. Especially his mark spiraling up my arm.
“What is it?”
“A scene from a very long time ago. When the Elders decided the war was no longer worth their time. They were simply going to wipe humans from the face of Viria, no matter the cost to dragonkind. And we would have lost many. The magic humans have against us is powerful and lethal.” His smile held pain. “Scalefire. It can strip us bare and leave us burning. We would have won, but it would not have been a victory.”
He walked over to me slowly and drew a finger over the white now marked on my skin. The same white that was on his skin beneath his clothes. The same white in the painting in front of me. “It was you?”
All he did was keep tracing the smoky patterns. “I had hoped to spare them. I cloaked the town in fog and mist, allowing them a chance to escape. But the Elders had commanded too many. It wouldn’t have made a difference.”
“We’re still here,” I said, meaning humans. “So clearly you did something.”
Endre turned to look at the painting. The feelings from him were so chaotic and melancholy I couldn’t keep up with them. “By that point both sides had taken heavy losses, and I wanted it all to stop. I wanted the dragons to be safe and I wanted the humans to leave us alone and be left alone. The people in the towns we were burning had nothing to do with the actions of who’d attacked us. So I tried. I created a barrier.”
Dread pooled in my stomach. “What kind of barrier?”
“One straight down the middle of the bowl through Evrítha. To keep our species divided. I couldn’t do anything to control the humans, but I could control the dragons. I didn’t care what it cost. So I made it so no dragon could cross that line without permission from the Heirs. It took… everything.
“Sirrus and Zovai stepped in and lent me their power because it took too much from me. It was killing me. They saved my life, and the barrier held. But I was spent.”
I didn’t dare speak or breathe to break the spell of his story. Deep down I knew where it was heading, but I wanted to hear him say it.
“I bound the magic to the sheyten. Or I tried. It was the only way I could think of to make it so the Elders couldn’t simply rip it to shreds. I begged the sheyten to protect the humans who were innocent, and I could have sworn they agreed. But for them,” he nodded to the villagers in the painting. “It was too late. While we wove the magic, the humans burned alive.”
The sharpness of his grief echoed in my chest. Guilt. Pain. He still felt it like it had happened yesterday, and he would never truly forgive himself for their deaths. I looked at the painting, now tinged with the feeling of his pain.
“Still, it worked,” a new voice said. Sirrus now stood at the doorway dressed in dusty blue that made his eyes glow. “No dragons save us could pass the line after that day, including the Elders. Their rage was something to behold. And because we had used everything we had, we couldn’t fight them when they came.”
Zovai appeared along with a sudden rush of understanding about the emotions I’d projected earlier. He didn’t interrupt, instead taking in the three of us and the mood in the air.
“They bound my power and marked me as a traitor. Promised to let me have my full power back after a hundred years. It’s been three hundred. At this point I don’t expect to ever be what I was until the Elders fade. If they ever do.”
I frowned. “But all three of you did it?”
“It was my action. My decision. They don’t care that the others might have done the same. I am the one who turned against them.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No,” Zovai said. “It isn’t. It’s never been fair. And they’ve spent centuries punishing all of us. Including last night, when they tried to kill you.”
Understanding dawned. It was because I was human, but it wasn’t only that.
I scanned the painting and the sea of dragons approaching the line. A mess of colors that seemed to sparkle in spite of it merely being painted. “Is the barrier still there?”
“After a fashion,” Sirrus crossed his arms and glared at the painting like it would let him turn back time and make things right. “It worked until the humans shattered the sheyten. They were so afraid of the dragon’s sudden absence they were convinced we were coming after them a different way. As soon as it broke, the barrier was not whole. All dragonkind cannot come through, but we are no longer the only ones who can give permission. And because we are beholden to the Elders…”
He let the words hang in the air.
Because their power had to bow to the Elders, they could be sent through the barrier to do the Elders’ bidding. Like the small attacks here and there that kept the tales of violent dragons alive and well for those who hated them. Like the task of killing a princess to stop an alliance.
“It’s been you three the whole time?”
“No,” Zovai said. “Not every time. But many. Small groups may be ordered through, and were, for various reasons. Mainly to keep the fear of dragons alive and prevent humans from attacking en masse.”
“Until the death of the land reaches the barrier. After that, I don’t think it will hold,” Endre said. “They’ll have nothing left to stop them. And it’s getting close.”
I nodded slowly, looking at Endre’s form in the painting. Now that I knew the story, his dragon seemed to be in agony. At once fierce and suffering. It was a stunning portrayal of what was probably the worst moment of his life. “Why do you keep this?”
“So we don’t forget. Dragons live for a long time, Princess,” Sirrus said quietly.
Leaning back against him, I loved the way he held me with such ease. So natural it felt like we’d been doing it for years. “Is there anything that can be done?”
There were some humans who deserved what might come to them. No one more than Andaros. But there were also people like Taia and Baris. Like Helena. People who had no quarrel with dragons and did their best to keep the truth alive. I didn’t want to see them all die.
“I don’t know,” Endre said. “While they hold this much power, and while mine are bound, I don’t think so.”
The weight of those words hung heavy on his shoulders as he walked to the door. I felt that he needed a moment alone, but as I looked at the painting once more, the question sprang into my mind, and I couldn’t hold it back. “Endre.”
He turned back to look at me, love in his gaze along with the pain.
“I know at least part of you is white.” I glanced downward toward his waist. “At Skalisméra. Last night. Even in this painting, I haven’t seen any other black dragons. Are you the only one?”
For a long, infinite moment, Endre stared at me. Everything in our connected felt blasted and blank. Like ashes.
“There are no black dragons.”
He turned and walked away.