Chapter 9
Nine
Timur
The dragon’s teeth have pierced my skin and muscles. His jaws are locked in my flesh. His obsidian skin is slowly paling already, with veins of white spreading from the blade of my dagger embedded into his brain through his ear.
The dragon is dead, but his teeth are in my thigh, and the poison is seeping into my blood.
I should be dead too. I probably will be. Soon. I can’t move my limbs already. Can’t feel anything, other than the searing pain from the dragon’s teeth slowly engulfing my body from the inside like liquid fire.
The agony is unbearable, but I can’t scream.
I can’t get up. I can’t even crawl.
But I’m still breathing. My chest is rising and falling with frantic, shallow gasps for air.
With my eyes still open, I can see, staring up into the pale morning sky.
And I still feel…
I feel Valeni’s weight on me. Her head is on my chest, with her long, thick braid snaking down my side, then over the black rocks of Ashgate Coast. We’ve been searching for Ashgate City, but all we’ve found was a nest of virutu dragons.
I want to call Valeni. I need to know if she’s still breathing too. I can’t feel her chest moving against mine, and that fills me with fear so cold, it even numbs pain.
Valeni is lying face down. Her nose is pressed into my skin. She can’t breathe like this.
Just a minute ago, we were both moving in the desperate, mind-obliterating passion of the mating fever when the dragon attacked. He bit her first, giving me a moment of warning, just enough time to pull my dagger out and strike.
A bite of a virutu dragon is always deadly. But I’m still alive. It gives me hope that Valeni still lives too.
“Valeni, Valeni, Valeni,” I chant in my head, willing her to move, waiting for a puff of her breath hitting the skin of my chest, for any sign that she’s still here, with me.
A movement appears around her head, and hope pulses stronger in my chest. This is not just her hair moving with the morning breeze. It must be her trying to lift her head. She can move. She’s alive. She’s…
A black thread separates from her braid. It rises and curls through the air, slowly dissolving into the morning light. Another one follows, then another… Thin long wisps of shadows lift from my lover’s body while my mating cluster is still inside her, the warmth of her is still on my skin.
“Valeni!” I scream in my head, but not a sound comes from my closed lips that I can no longer open.
All I could do is watch with my eyes that I can no longer close as my woman’s spirit is leaving this world. The body that I had been dreaming of touching for weeks is now dissolving into wisps of shadows.
The hair that I have run my hands through is turning to nothing.
Her rare dark eyes.
Her lips.
Her strong legs that could walk for days without tiring.
Her muscular arms that could wield a heavy sword like it was a feather and throw a spear as far as an arrow released from a bow.
Every single trace of the woman, whom I’ve fought with side by side, whom I’ve grown to admire so much that it has triggered our mating fever despite our best efforts to prevent it…
Every trace of her is gone in days as I lie there, motionless, watching her being taken from this world—from me—wisp by wisp.
Suddenly, instead of the Valeni’s black braid, it’s a thick mane of dark-brown locks that spreads over my chest like a silky shroud. Instead of the brown eyes dissolving into shadows, it’s a pair of multi-colored hazel ones looking at me.
“I need to see you,” a feminine voice says.
It’s not the deep, powerful voice of Valeni, but the soft, higher voice of another woman.
Elaine.
She isn’t Valeni. She doesn’t wield weapons or march tirelessly across the desert for days. She doesn’t kill and probably wouldn’t be able to fight off even a cat. There is sweetness in her that’s worth more than the gold I’d paid to own her. She’s worth much more than this world would ever know.
When I think about Elaine, my pain recedes, replaced by worry. Fear shakes me. I ache to protect this woman, but I fear that I may not be strong enough.
I’m no longer a fae.
I’m no longer alive.
I’m a shadow, enclosed into bone.
I am a spirit, clinging to life only because death won’t have me.
There is no salvation for the likes of me.
“Timur!” The voice sliced across my mind.
I woke up instantly, relieved to be ripped out from the same recurring nightmare, then stilled. Afraid to move a muscle, I strained my body to keep it absolutely, perfectly motionless. Shifting my feet too sharply would plunge me into burning, mind-blinding agony.
“Elaine?” I ventured a single breath, releasing it with her name.
A tapping noise filtered through my awareness, then the sloshing of footsteps as she moved closer, the pale outline of her dress emerging from the semi-darkness.
“I’m here,” she said. “Water is coming in—”
“Water?”
A Big Wave? Again?
Elaine couldn’t breathe under water. She’d drown. Alarm pierced through me like an arrow. In one movement, I grabbed her with my arm around her waist and hauled her onto my lap. I shoved the door open and steered my chair out of the hut.
She shoved against my chest. “Timur! What are you doing? What’s going on?”
Torrential rain crashed down on us the moment we left the safety of the roof, but the ocean remained where it was supposed to be. The pale lace of the surf edged the beach in a safe distance from the hut.
“It’s just rain,” I exhaled in relief.
“Exactly. Isn’t it a good thing? Free water.”
I ran a hand over my wet hair, then took my cloak from the armrest and pulled it on.
“What did you think it was? Why did you freak out?” Elaine asked.
“A Big Wave comes ashore in Ashgate every few decades,” I explained. “It sweeps away the shacks and even floods the lower rows of caves, I’ve heard.”
It didn’t happen very often. With any luck, hopefully, we’d be out of here before it happened again.
I glanced around, blinking away the rain from my eyes.
Water drops clung to the eyelashes of my left eye.
The right one, the red eye of the dragon, had no eyelashes at all, only a thin, transparent membrane I could close like an eyelid.
It slightly blurred the vision from that eye, but it also allowed me to see not just through the rain but through smoke and even fire if needed.
I tried to pull a side of the cloak over Elaine, to shield her from the rain, but she laughed, pushing it away.
“We should collect the rain water,” I said.
“Good idea. I’ll get the bucket.”
Elaine ran back into the shack and brought the bucket. With it raining so hard, she’d probably fill it with fresh water soon enough.
“Here.” She handed it to me. “Find the best place for it. Maybe in that corner over there? Looks like most of the water from the roof is running down to that spot.”
I bent my head, hiding my face from the rain. I took baths when I had a chance. But like most of my kind, I preferred slow underground streams or placid lakes inside caves to the chaotic nature of water rushing from the sky. The ever-changing nature of the ocean also disturbed me.
Despite my discomfort, however, I took the bucket from Elaine and steered my chair toward the spot she’d pointed out.
“Go back inside,” I told her.
“Inside? Are you crazy?” She laughed again, lifting her face to the rain.
Sun broke through the heavy rain clouds, creating that rare, barely natural blend of storm and sunlight. The air was warm, and this crazy woman clearly reveled in the water plummeting down on her.
“I’m taking a shower,” she declared with a wide smile, then promptly got out of her clothes.
I should’ve gone back inside after positioning the bucket under the stream. But I stayed, forgetting all about my aversion to the rain. I shouldn’t have looked, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her, following her hands as they peeled off her wet dress and undergarments, exposing her skin.
She quickly lathered her thick, brown hair with soap. Mesmerized, I watched as she ran her fingers through her long, wet tresses, rinsing the suds off.
She lathered her body next. Her hands moved quickly, as though she feared the rain wouldn’t last long and she needed to hurry. But to me, every movement of hers appeared in slow motion as I committed every detail to memory.
Rain ran down her naked body, the rivulets tracing her every curve. And I let my gaze trace it too, from her lovely face upturned toward the sky, down to her shoulders, her heavy breasts with dusty-pink nipples, to the gentle swell of her belly, and the steep curve of her hips…
The more I stared, the warmer my body grew.
My muscles tightened. Tension gripped my shoulders.
My fingers curled, ready to grab, the claws ready to sink into the gentle, pliable flesh.
My cock swelled, throbbing with lust. Blood rushed through my veins, pulsing in my brain with deafening thundering in my ears.
My gaze paused on the small patch of dark curves between Elaine’s thighs, and she made the grave mistake of glancing my way at that very moment.
Shock registered on her face, and her hands paused on her body. She hadn’t hesitated when getting undressed in front of me. She knew that shadow fae had no sexual desires. Normally, we had no sexual organs and treated nudity with indifference.
Except that I was no longer just a shadow fae.
The dragon poison had been taking over my body and my mind.
Virutu dragons didn’t need to wait for the mating fever to fuck.
Their males had cocks, made of bone and flesh, just like the one I’d had for about three years now.
They lusted after their females, the way I’d been lusting after my delectable Joy Vessel.
And they fucked whenever they wished, which I hadn’t done.
Ever since the effects of the dragon’s poison became visible, people had shunned me, and I had stayed away from them. Elaine was the first person to share a living space with me, the first to enter my mind since Valeni, and the only one who’d been stoking my desire for the two weeks I’d known her.
“Timur?” Her voice was probing.
Squinting at me, she made no effort to cover up, exposed to the punishing rain and to my burning stare. Her chest heaved with a shaky breath. The droplets of rain clinging to her hardened nipples trembled.
She froze, obviously unsure of how to react to my hungry stare.
And then it was too late for her to do anything at all. I could no longer stay in place. Flicking my wrist, I moved my chair forward. I stopped only when her thighs were between my open knees. I whipped my arms around her. With a soft whimper, she swayed forward.
I caught the droplet from her nipple on my tongue, then I lapped the rain from her body, dragging my tongue between her breasts. Like a man dying from thirst that couldn’t be quenched, I drank the water flavored with her skin, and I couldn’t get enough.
“What are you doing?” she breathed out, the uncertainty in her voice undoing me.
I raked my claws and fingers over the skin of her back, pressing her closer. Her body arched into me, her thighs rubbing through my skirt against my cock. Lust rocked through me with a violent shudder.
“Timur?” She repeated my name.
There was a note of trepidation in her voice. A few moments ago, that would’ve stopped me. But that was a few moments ago. An eternity of pent-up desire had been unleashed since, while her sweet, tender thighs pressed against my strained cock.
I held her so tightly, even death wouldn’t be able to pry my arms from her. I growled against her skin, trapping her nipple between my teeth.
“What is…this?” She moved her leg forward, sliding her knee up the ridged shaft of my long-suffering cock.
I growled, digging my fingers into her hips and rocking my cock against her. With a soft cry, she pushed with her hands against my shoulders.
I snarled like a beast, refusing to give up my prey.
“Stop!” She shoved harder. Fear vibrated in her voice. “Please…”
Her plea cut through my mind sharper than a blade. I froze, just breathing her in.
“Please let me go,” she said softly and surprisingly calmly enough.
With my forehead pressed to her chest, I unclenched my arms. The effort pained me, like a rod of Nerifir iron piercing through my chest.
She staggered backwards, freeing herself from the trap of my embrace.
My head hung between my shoulders, the rain rushing down from the edge of my hood. I couldn’t look at her. If I did, I feared my body would refuse to listen to my mind. The dragon would take over, and I didn’t want to think about what I’d do to her then…
“I…I’m sorry.” She grabbed her soggy dress from the corner of the roof where she’d hung it up and pressed it to her chest, concealing her alluring nakedness from me. “I didn’t know. I would’ve never taken my clothes off if I knew…”
She wouldn’t have poked the dragon had she known how very much affected I would be, because she didn’t want anything to do with someone like me.
I didn’t blame her, not for a second. And that was the only thing regarding my current emotions that I was absolutely certain about.
“Go back inside,” I snarled, unable to listen to her apologies when it was me who had to beg for her forgiveness.
She didn’t make me tell her twice. Swiping the soap and the rest of her clothes, she ran back into the hut, leaving me alone under the torrential downpour.
I hated rain. The chaos of a storm unnerved me. But I lifted my face to the cool water falling from the gray sky. The cold rivulets snaked under my soaked cloak, cooling my feverish skin. If only the rain could extinguish the burning desire I felt for the woman hiding inside my hut.