Chapter 44
Forty-Four
Dirk
Leaving Ella to shower, I walked to the balcony and paused to look at the closed door. My mate was in there. I could feel her happiness and contentment humming along the link that joined us.
It was infectious. I should have wanted to smile. The change in Ella—from shocked and scared I would reject her to fulfilled and joyful—was incredibly satisfying to myself and my dragon.
Or it should have been.
Clamping down on my emotions, I focused on nothingness …calm, empty.
With a thought, wings sprouted from my back once more, and I took to the air, soaring high above Kylma and toward the far side of the huge capital city. I needed the distance from Ella so she wouldn’t be able to pick up on my emotions. But what’s more, my destination lay there.
My joy and happiness stayed behind with her, replaced by cold rage.
I did not want to be leaving so soon after finally claiming my mate. It wasn’t logical. But I couldn’t stop myself. Not this time. My mind was elsewhere as I flew. In the past.
A past that had suddenly become much more relevant. The memory, long locked-up tight, came back to me in a rush, bringing with it all the anger and frustration from that night and the many nights that followed. Ten years of rage and darkness welled up inside me once more and laughed at me.
I was an idiot. A na?ve idiot. How dare I think I could turn things around to become someone else, someone worthy and deserving. Fate had to be laughing at me for this cruel prank.
How could another suffer such pain and horror because someone else opted for leniency? It wasn’t right.
But it will be. I’ll make it right.
Mercy had been given once, but that gift had been rubbed in dirt stained with Ella’s blood.
Ahead of me a rocky hill rose at the edges of Kylma. A building had been constructed into its side, and a stone wall ran around the entire thing, keeping out unwanted visitors.
But it wouldn’t stop me.
I landed lightly just inside the gate, touching down without fanfare or effort into a crouch that I held. I stirred the dirt at my feet with a single finger, the projection of apparent total calm. Inside, I was anything but.
There were two guards. They both hopped down from the towers that flanked the entry gate and started toward me. Hunters, both of them.
“If you value your lives,” I growled from my crouch. “Step aside.”
They kept coming.
“Fine.”
Rising from my crouch, I let go of the tight reins I held on my power. For the first time in a long time, alpha power rivaled only by that of the Ice Tyrant himself rushed out from me.
The guards were flattened to the ground, struck completely unaware by the rush of my birthright.
I headed for the sole building and the familiar set of double-doors that I knew led deep into the hill beyond.
The Hunter Hall beckoned me, and I walked toward it, ignoring those behind me, and anyone else as power continued to flow outward with me at its center.
Flinging open the doors, I picked up the first prone dragon shifter I could find, pinning him to the nearest wall hard enough that the writing engraved into it would leave marks on his back.
The young male’s eyes rolled back into his head as he was pummeled by the waves of alpha power ordering him to submit and obey.
“Where is Jiricek Three-Eyes?” I demanded, giving him a shake.
Drool started falling from his mouth, so I cast him aside in disgust. Too weak to even speak.
Sound from behind me caught my attention. Someone had come in from a side passage. They were hunched over, face wrought in focus, but they moved nonetheless.
“Kneel,” I commanded.
“What do you want?” he hissed, his face twitching, but he didn’t break.
Impressive. The Hunter had to be near Elite-level to manage that much resistance.
“I want to know where Jiricek Three-Eyes is,” I growled. “He and I have much to talk about.”
“Screw you. The Hunter Hall isn’t for you. You don’t belong here.”
I tilted my head back and laughed, the sound hollow and mocking. “You have no idea who I am. Do you?”
“Some Elite from the citadel, come down here thinking they can boss us around.” The shifter spat and pointed to the wall of writing. “Those are the ones who can come here unannounced and give us orders. The Honored Hunters.”
I walked across the room, batted aside his feeble defenses—too much energy was being used fighting my power—snatched him up, and slammed him against the wall, pressing his skull into the names etched there until his eyes began to bleed.
Using my other hand, I drove a conjured spike of ice through his skull and into the wall, pinning him there. “Read it more carefully next time,” I hissed, and headed deeper into the complex to where I knew the older Hunters congregated.
Eventually, after violent persuasion, I got what I wanted. A room.
The door shattered under my kick, and I burst inside.
“Hello, Three-Eyes,” I rumbled as the Hunter inside backed up against the far wall.
The Hunter—a century or two older than me but not showing any signs of aging—was able to look at me without going unconscious, but he could do little more.
“What do you want with me? I don’t know you,” he forced out, the long scar down the side of his face twisting wildly. From within the eye-socket the polished piece of marble seemed to bulge, the pair of eyes inked on to it that gave him his name staring sightlessly just a little to my left.
I laughed once more. “Oh, but we do know one another.”
The Hunter shook his head. “I’ve never dealt with royalty before. I would remember that.”
I sneered, my right hand shifting and my fingers stretching into claws as I came closer. “I wasn’t royalty back then. Just like you didn’t go by your first name.”
The man with the thick beard and a perfectly formed set of teeth marks on his forearm that had never healed properly frowned as he stared at me.
“You might recall better if you still had both eyes. Though they didn’t help you much the night we met. I see the rage-Fae marks never healed either. Pity.”
Jiricek “Three-Eyes” Grange sat up straight, his remaining eye opening wide with horror.
“Y-you? You’re C—” he started to say as I lunged forward, slamming him back against the wall. My claws stopped an inch from his working eye as he trembled in fear, my alpha power still rendering him all but helpless.
“You swore to me that you would never traffic Grounded again. That you would see the error of your ways. I took your eye, but I let you live, on your word,” I rumbled, losing control of my anger the more I talked.
“You lied to me, Grange. You lied! You sold a Clippy to humans! I let you live and you sold my mate to human scum!”
Grange tried to speak. More lies, I was sure, so I broke his jaw.
“I should never have let a single Hunter live that day,” I whispered, my face inches from his. “I will carry that guilt with me for the rest of time. But I can ensure no one else will be hurt by you. I am done making mistakes.”
Claws flashed.