Chapter 26
Twenty-Six
Dirk
“Enough. I give,” Kolar gasped as I squeezed.
He tapped my arm three times, and I let him go. He flopped to the padded floor, lying in a puddle of his own sweat, chest rising and falling as he struggled to regain his breath.
I stepped away from his body and assumed a similar position but on my back, my arms and legs all but melting into the floor. My lungs worked hard as I stared up at the ceiling.
Despite the exhaustion in my muscles from rounds of lifting weights and sparring in the gym, a lump of ice so cold it burned still lived within me. But it wasn’t energy. It was anger.
How could I have been so stupid!
It was easy to see that I had pushed Ella too far. She wasn’t ready for that kind of intensity between us, and it had overwhelmed her. Now, just as she had finally marked me for the first time, I had gone and thrown a huge roadblock in the path of us becoming fully bonded.
The most frustrating part was that I knew better. I knew what she had been through recently. My fingers tightened as I relived those first few nights after Yarl’s slave collar had been removed from her neck.
I would never forget the screams. More than once, I had found myself at her door, as if I could ward off the evil that was tormenting her. From the start, there had been an undercurrent to her pain that had drawn me in, but nothing like now. At least that was one mystery solved.
The theory that the slave collar had scrambled her dragon, and thus confused mine, made perfect sense. They hadn’t been able to recognize one another in the aftermath, and only after I left for a time did the mate bond snap into place.
I rubbed at my chest and the marks there.
The rich browns shot through with streaks of golden lightning.
It was a beautiful combination, one I had seen mirrored in her eyes on two occasions, though I longed to see it more.
I could stare into them, memorizing every line, and never get bored in a thousand years.
But that wasn’t what Ella needed right now.
She needs time and space. And as her mate, it’s your job to provide it for her.
“You okay?”
I blinked myself back to the present to find Kolar now up and standing next to me, his hand extended. Clasping at the wrist, I let him pull me to my feet. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. You were gone somewhere else there. Made me feel like a fool sticking my hand out for a minute,” he teased before turning serious. “You sure you’re fine? You just spent the past hour tossing me around the gym like you had a score to settle with us.”
“Did I? Sorry.” I wiped some hair from my eyes. It plastered itself to the side of my face, but at least I could see clearly. “I’m good now. And I have a few bruises that tell me it wasn’t as one-sided as you’re making it out to be.”
“I’m not totally incompetent,” Kolar said with a smile.
“You aren’t even partially incompetent, or I wouldn’t trust you to guard Ella.”
Kolar was silent as we made our way to one side, grabbing towels and wiping our faces down.
“What’s it like?”
I blinked, caught off guard—not by the question but by the curiosity. “What’s what like?”
Kolar shrugged, looking into his towel, not at me. “You know. Having a mate.”
“I’m not mated.”
“Not yet,” Kolar said, annoyance coloring his words. “You might not have claimed her, but everyone who has seen you two together can see that you like each other.”
I glanced at him. He rolled his eyes and laughed.
“Seriously? Powers of observation aren’t restricted to the royal line. Some of us other alpha-levels can use both eyes as well. Plus, you did kind of abscond with her from the landing grounds in front of … well, everyone. Kinda hard to hide that one.”
It was my turn to laugh. He was right. Who was I kidding?
“So I ask again. What’s it like?”
I took my time to think about it, to make sure I gave him the right answer. The real truth. “Intense,” I said at last.
Kolar grunted. “I believe that. It looks it.”
I arched an eyebrow.
“You two clearly want one another,” he said, elaborating. “At the same time, you just as clearly have things to work through.”
“You mean I have problems.”
“No. Well, probably,” Kolar said with a smile only a friend could get away with. “What I mean is you both have things to work through. Those were my words, and I meant them. Ella has something too, though I don’t think it’s just from that stupid collar they put on her.”
I knew it wasn’t that. Not just that, at least. Something else had happened to Ella, in her past. She had been truly hurt, somehow, by someone, and she wasn’t letting anyone in.
Even her friends didn’t seem to fully know what was going on with her. She was keeping it all bottled up inside, and it was destroying her.
“I saw some of it,” Kolar continued. “While I was at the chalet and you were gone. She’s, I’m not sure, closed off, in a way? Something like that.”
He shrugged and wiped his face once more, which was for the best. Otherwise, he might have caught sight of the insane flash of jealousy that filled me.
It burned on the most basic of levels that Kolar knew something, had seen something about Ella, that I was completely in the dark about. She was my mate, and I didn’t know what was wrong. Thus I couldn’t fix it. And that hurt.
“Do you like it?”
“More than anything,” I said instantly, without hesitation.
“Knowing I have a mate, being marked by her for the first time … incredible feeling. I can’t wait to experience it again and again until we fly into the west. There are things keeping us apart, making it difficult.
But we have time. Today, tomorrow, a decade from now, I know we’ll work through it, and when we do, I will never stop smiling.
The tiny peeks I get right now, Ko, you don’t understand. It’s perfection. She’s perfection.”
I was beaming from ear to ear when I finally shut up, and Kolar was laughing at my giddiness, but I didn’t care. It felt so good to tell someone else, to give voice to the things living inside me, to make it real.
Now I just had to make sure I didn’t screw up. Again.
“Thanks for the workout,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder. “If you can call it that.”
Kolar laughed. “Oh, it’s like that, is it?”
“It’s like that,” I confirmed jokingly as he grabbed his gear and headed out so others could use the training area.
I followed a minute later, still thinking about Ella and how I was going to go about fixing my mistake, and also what I could do to get her to trust me and open up. Whatever her past was, I didn’t care about it. I only cared about making sure she was happy here and now.
But how do I show her that?
Pulling my shirt over my head, I bumped the door open with a hip.
“Watch it, imbecile!” someone snarled as they sidestepped out of the way. “Look where you’re going next time.”
I pulled the shirt down, my mood instantly dark as I came face to face with my uncle.
Mirko, realizing who he was snapping at, clamped his mouth shut. Not that he felt any different. He just didn’t want an incident.
We stared at one another. I waited. Just like he had in the throne room, pushing Caz. Now it was my turn.
The black mark on his cheek twisted as his lips pulled back. I waited for the outburst, the acidic hate in his words for someone he considered “weak,” simply because I didn’t automatically prey on those weaker than me.
It never came.
Instead, Mirko smoothed out the hate and replaced it with a smug smile as he stepped aside.
The arrogant hint of “soon you’ll get what’s coming to you” that he managed to convey was too much.
This was the man who had threatened my perfect mate and her friends.
The man who made deals with the fire dragons.
I couldn’t let his attitude slide. Not today. He deserved to pay.
“I know it was you who sent the Reds,” I said coldly, waiting for the shock to appear.
Mirko was too experienced for that. He slowly turned to face me directly.
“Excuse me?”
The false innocence spiked my rage higher. “Don’t play innocent with me, Uncle,” I growled, turning the word into an insult. “I know you’re a traitor to the kingdom. I know you’re working with them. When I prove it, it will be the end of you.”
Mirko waited until I subsided into seething anger before tossing his head back and laughing. “It’s impossible to prove something that isn’t true, nephew.”
Clenching my fists, I fought down the urge to knock the false smile from his face. We both knew he was full of shit. He was just egging me on with the innocent act. Unfortunately, it was working.
“If you’re lying,” I swore, glaring at him, “and if you are the one who put my mate in danger, I will repay your actions a thousandfold.”
Mirko’s eyes lifted. “Your mate?” he asked, and this time the surprise seemed genuine, though it quickly faded into a cold, calculating look in his eyes.
I clenched my teeth. Had he really not known already? Had none of his supporters been on the landing field to see me abscond with Ella? Damn. I should have been more careful.
Because now I’d just gone and painted a huge target on her back.