Chapter 5 Darrokar
DARROKAR
Terra sat cross-legged on the floor near the bathing pool, her back to the entrance.
Her blade lay across her knees, and she worked a whetstone along its edge with mechanical precision.
The sound grated against my nerves, sharp and aggressive.
Each stroke too hard, too fast, like she was trying to grind the metal down to nothing.
I stopped just inside the doorway and watched her.
The set of her shoulders told me everything. Every muscle in her back drawn tight enough to snap. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the blade's hilt, and the whetstone moved with barely controlled violence.
Something had happened.
I felt it in my chest, a tightness that had nothing to do with my own emotions and everything to do with hers. Fear. Anger. Both twisted together until I couldn't separate them.
My claws flexed. The urge to cross to her, to demand answers, to find whoever had put that tension in her spine and tear them apart, it burned through me. But I forced myself to stillness. She knew I was here. She'd heard me enter. And she was choosing not to acknowledge my presence.
That meant she needed space. Or she was trying to work through something on her own.
Or she was avoiding a conversation she didn't want to have.
I stayed where I was and let the silence stretch.
The blade sang against the stone. Over and over. A pattern she'd repeated so many times the sound had worn grooves into my patience.
"Tell me about the Skalanth," she said without looking up.
The question came out too carefully neutral. Like she'd been waiting for me to arrive so she could ask with exactly that tone.
I moved deeper into the quarters, my steps loud enough that she could track my approach. "What do you want to know?"
"What it involves. Why it matters." Another stroke, harder than necessary. "You've been preparing for weeks. I should probably understand what all the fuss is about."
She was looking for something specific but approaching it sideways, like she thought I wouldn't notice.
I did.
I crossed the space between us and knelt behind her. Close enough that my body heat would reach her, that she'd feel my presence at her back. But I didn't touch her.
"It's a trial," I said. "For young warriors who want to prove themselves worthy of their rank."
"And they do this how?"
"By retrieving the blood-flame from the inner sanctum of the Forge Temple and delivering it to the waiting priests at the city's edge."
Her hands stilled on the blade. "It doesn't sound that complicated."
"It isn't. If you can get past the obstacles, the traps, and the senior warriors positioned between the sanctum and the finish." I let that sink in. "Most can't."
"What happens if they fail?" she was still working her blade.
"They try again next year. If they survive the attempt."
That got her attention. She turned her head slightly, not quite looking at me but acknowledging the weight of those words. "People die?"
"Sometimes. We do try to avoid it." I kept my voice level, factual. "Broken bones are common. Serious injuries happen. We do what we can to prevent deaths, but when you put young warriors in a situation designed to test their limits, the idiots will do their best to ruin it."
She set the blade down carefully. Too carefully. Like she was afraid if she moved too quickly, she'd do something she couldn't take back. "It sounds dangerous."
"It is."
"But important."
"Yes."
She picked up the whetstone again, turned it over in her hands. The motion was absent, distracted. Her mind was somewhere else entirely. "Maybe I should participate."
The suggestion struck me so hard it stole my breath.
"No." The refusal came out harder than I'd intended, but I didn't soften it.
Couldn't. The very thought of Terra in the Skalanth, facing obstacles designed to challenge warriors twice her size with natural weapons she didn't possess, it made something violent and protective roar to life in my chest.
"It would be good training," she said, still not looking at me. "A chance to test myself against your warriors. Show them I'm not just some fragile human who needs protection at every turn."
"You have nothing to prove."
"Don't I?" She finally turned to face me, and the expression in her eyes made my fangs ache. "Half of Scalvaris thinks I'm corrupting you. That I'm weak. That I don't belong here. Maybe if I participated, proved I could handle myself by their standards, they'd—"
"They'd what?" I interrupted. "Accept you?
Welcome you? Stop seeing you as an outsider?
" I leaned closer, holding her gaze. "You could win the Skalanth outright, and there would still be those who resent your presence.
Karyseth and her followers won't change their minds because you retrieve a sacred gem.
They'll just find new reasons to justify their hatred. "
"So I should do nothing? Just let them talk? Let them treat me like I'm some kind of parasite?"
"You should let me handle it." It was the wrong thing to say. I knew it the moment the words left my mouth.
Her expression shuttered. She turned back to her blade, picked it up, started working the whetstone again. "Right. Because that's what I do. Hide behind the Warrior Lord while he fights my battles."
"That's not what I meant."
"Isn't it?"
I could push. Demand she stop deflecting and tell me what had really happened. Use my size, my strength, my authority to force the conversation she was avoiding.
Instead, I reached out and took the blade from her hands.
She started to protest, but I set the weapon aside and shifted closer. My chest pressed against her back, my arms coming around her waist. I buried my face in her hair and breathed deep, letting her scent fill my lungs. Sweet. Wild.
Mine.
"Darrokar—"
"Later," I said against her neck. "We'll talk about the Skalanth later."
"We're talking about it now."
"No. We're not." I found the sensitive spot just below her ear and traced it with my tongue. Felt her shiver. Felt the tension in her spine shift from anger to something else entirely. "Right now, I'm going to distract you."
"I don't need to be distracted."
"Yes, you do." I moved my hands up her sides, slow and intentional, feeling the way her breathing changed when I reached her ribs. "You're wound tight enough to snap. Whatever happened, whatever you're not telling me, it's eating at you. So let me take your mind off it."
"That's not how this works."
"Of course it is." I turned her in my arms until she faced me, until I could see her eyes. "You're my mate. Your pain is mine. And if I can ease it, even temporarily, I will."
She opened her mouth to argue. I kissed her before she could.
The taste of her flooded my senses. Sweet. Soft. Everything opposite to the violence and stone and heat that defined my world. I gentled the kiss, kept it slow despite the urgency burning through my veins.
It wasn't about claiming or possessing.
It was about comfort. Connection. Reminding her that whatever had happened, whatever she was facing, she didn't face it alone.
She resisted for maybe three seconds. Then she melted into me with a sound that made my chest ache.
I took my time undressing her. My claws traced patterns on her skin as I exposed it, careful not to scratch, just to feel.
The contrast between her softness and my scales never failed to undo something in me.
She was so breakable. So fragile. And yet she'd survived everything this world had thrown at her.
She was stronger than anyone believed.
I picked her up and carried her to the center of the room, laying her back on our sleeping platform, the silks soft beneath her. The heat crystals cast her skin in warm light, made her hair look like flame against the dark material.
My cock twitched with want.
I covered her body with mine, careful of my weight, and kissed her again. Deeper this time. Tasting her thoroughly, loving the sounds she made when I found the spots that made her gasp. Her hands came up to grip my shoulders, nails digging in, and I growled my approval against her mouth.
"Darrokar." My name on her lips was a prayer. A plea.
"I have you, luvae." I moved down her body, trailing kisses along her throat, her collarbone, the soft skin between her breasts. "Let me take care of you."
I worshipped her with my mouth. Every inch of skin.
Every curve and hollow. I learned the places that made her arch, the touches that made her whimper.
My tail wound around her thigh, holding her open for me, and when I finally put my mouth on her pussy, she cried out loud enough to echo off the stone walls.
I took my time there too. Used my tongue, my lips, the careful edge of my fangs to drive her higher. Licked through her folds, circled her clit, tasted how wet she was for me.
She tasted like salt and sweetness and desperation. Her hands fisted in my hair, holding me against her cunt, and I felt the moment she stopped thinking and surrendered completely to sensation.
When she came, it was with my name on her lips and her body trembling beneath my hands.
I gentled her through it, soft kisses and careful touches, until her breathing steadied. Then I moved back up her body and positioned myself between her thighs. The head of my cock pressed against her entrance, already slick from my body's natural preparation and her own wetness.
"Look at me," I said.
She did. Those green eyes met mine, hazy with pleasure but focused. Present.
I pushed in slowly. Watched her face as I filled her, as her sex stretched to accommodate me. The pleasure was intense, overwhelming, but I kept my movements controlled. It wasn't about taking. It was about giving. About showing her without words what she meant to me.