Chapter Two
Legend
Storm clouds roll in over the valleys in a wave of darkness. Images flick over my head of them drowning out Rathe in its entirety, just to make it all…stop.
Hands land on my stomach, and I look down to see the white-tipped fingernails of Arabella.
“Everything okay?” I ask without turning, keeping my focus pinned ahead.
“You’ve been standing at this window for an hour,” she says softly, kissing my back. “Come to bed.”
I wait for it. The spark, the want, the fucking need to drown myself in her. The over-powering obsession of ripping layers of her away, if only to make it easier for me to climb inside.
I feel nothing.
My reflection stares back at me through the window.
Sometime between now and whenever the fuck that night was, my shoulders become wider.
All I do is eat and bench. There’s no other way to release the kind of rage I feel lying dormant like a snake in hibernation.
Even the lines on my face have evaporated. No movement. No nothing.
“Legend.” Arabella’s hands slide higher, pressing flat against my chest. “You need rest. Your power has been unstable since…”
She doesn’t finish. She never finishes, as if the thought of it pains her. I mean, shit, it probably does.
Since I discarded my fake mate in a room full of people who wanted her dead.
My grip on the glass tightens before I throw back the Fae juice, hissing at the burn as it settles in my gut. Now I feel something. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not.” Her footsteps are light against the stone floor as she rounds to the front of me. Arabella is beautiful in the way things that don’t have anything else to offer are. There’s no depth to her beauty, no trickery. It’s flat and boring.
What the fuck? Why did I just think that?
My knuckles skim her cheek. “Relax, let the bond settle. You know it’s fresh and new right now; you’re just hyperaware of every little thing. I promise you, I’m fine.”
I fucking ain’t. The fact that she doesn’t know that isn’t alarming, though, since I don’t even really know it. Except for when I do, like right now.
Everything is so…quiet. But quiet is good. Quiet is clearly what I needed to balance me out. The Gods don’t get this shit wrong. Witches do.
She winces. Fucking winces. My dick is gonna kill her. Then remake her.
“Okay.” Her lips turn up a little at the corner, but it’s hardly a smile. “Maybe it’s just that your Ethos needs to settle from whatever that witch did. Our bond will take over whatever she did to you soon, and he’ll rise.”
I don’t want to talk about it anymore, so I wrap my arm around her waist and force her lips to mine.
My cock stirs. Finally. Something.
Arabella moans into my mouth as my hands slide down, gripping the curve of her ass through the thin silk of her nightgown. The fabric bunches under my fingers, pulling her hips flush against mine. She scrambles for the band of my sweats, desperation in every flick of her tongue.
Her hunger only starves out mine.
I deepen the kiss, teeth scraping her bottom lip, tongue stroking against hers.
I know this song and dance, performed it often—and well.
Never had any complaints, truly, and always enjoyed it.
I still remember when Khad, a pixie fairy, danced her shit all over my lap.
Fuck, I never thought I’d want anything as much as I wanted to fuck her, and I did. More than once. Her little—
Arabella drops to her knees. I wrap her blond hair around my fist. Once. Twice. The silk of her hair glows against the moonlight.
Gripping the base of my cock, I guide it to her waiting mouth.
Her lips part, warmth swallowing me whole. She groans, sending vibrations down my shaft. I concentrate on her, on what she’s doing as her head bobs up and down. She looks up at me from below, making all the right sounds and doing all the right things.
My grip tightens, and I try to focus. Her mouth, soft and wet. The room blurs at the edges and the blond strands of her hair start to slowly turn dark.
I don’t stop, my hips meeting her at every thrust. That sickly sweet perfume she wears disappears behind smoke, leather, and spice—Yes. So fucking mine.
Arabella’s eyes peer up at me again—only they’re not Arabella’s. They’re the familiar deep green, living emeralds of Haide’s eyes. Rage tears through the building pleasure, but it doesn’t replace it. It fucking fuels it.
My hand lands on her jaw as I force her up to her feet.
“Legend…”
“Shut up.” My mouth crashes against hers, sliding my hand over the side of her face and landing on her throat.
I peel myself away, resting my forehead against hers.
“Now.” My thumb grazes her jaw, the corner of my mouth twitching. “Wanna be a good girl and fuck me like you own me?”
A knock cracks against the door.
I turn as it swings open, and Sinner fills the doorway, all tight and annoyed. I can smell his tension from here, and if he wasn’t so pissed, I’d kick him the fuck out.
Tucking my shit away, I glare at him. “What?”
His eyes bounce between me and Arabella before settling back on me. “We have a problem. Well, a second problem.”
“Am I supposed to know what the first one is?”
My brother only stares.
Arabella makes a small noise of frustration. “Whatever it is can wait until morning. Legend needs…”
“Wasn’t talking to you. And it can’t.” Sinner doesn’t look at her. I’m starting to think he fucking hates her. And Sinner hates no one. He doesn’t give a shit enough about anyone to hate them.
So, what’s his problem with her?
I haven’t gotten to fuck my mate yet. To get rid of a certain dark-haired parasite from my head, because something always comes up and one family member is busting down the door.
It’s starting to piss me the fuck off.
Alarms bellow through the room, piercing our ears. It tears through every damn thing in this kingdom, my logic included.
My body reacts before my brain does, shoulders squaring. Magic floods to my fingertips, but there’s a strange weight behind it I choose to ignore.
For the first time in too long, the fog in my head clears.
“What is it?” I’m already moving toward the door, eager for a distraction from the noise in my head.
Arabella’s voice calls after us, but her words don’t register over the screaming bells and a distant, muffled roar. The roar of a beast with a score to settle.
“Is that—” Arabella starts to say.
“Yep” I blink. “One angry fucking dragon.”
Knight and Creed are already ahead of us as we rush down the hall.
The crystal chandelier above shattering as a second furious roar rolls across the kingdom.
I should be used to the familiar panicked wail of the alarms, yet my body reacts like it’s the first time I’m being called to violence.
My nerves fire hot and fast as I move through the doorway with my magic already crawling up my arms. It’s tight, almost like the rope of restraint refuses to release it fully, but it’s there.
The palace staff scatter as we pass, mouths open in silent questions no one has time to answer. Another roar follows, closer now, edged with a shriek of tearing metal.
Sinner’s shoulders tighten as he strides beside me.
“Where?”
“Southwest,” he bites out. “Near the boundary leading to the portal to Rathe U.”
Rathe U…
“Tell me, Lord Dickship. Am I to be impressed?” Haide fucking curtsies, that small smirk teasing the corner of her lips when she gestures around the room.
My jaw clenches at the memory, and I force it away.
The dragons don’t come this low unless they are summoned.
Unless they are protecting. But my family is accounted for— so what the fuck is happening?
“Hatchlings? Still learning the law of the sky?” I ask, not buying it.
“Does that sound like a baby dragon to you?” Sinner flicks a raised brow my way.
No. No, it doesn’t. So, what the fuck? Is something going on in the sky laws that we don’t know about?
We burst through the main doors, immediately greeted by harsh winds and burning smoke.
A blue dragon scores the sky, sapphire scales catching what little light leaks through the storm.
He should be guarding the realm. The dragons of Rathe have always been proof that something older than crowns and more sacred than the blood in our own veins exists here.
This one is not guarding.
This one is attacking.
Fire explodes from his mouth in a rapid stream, his rage ripping through the air. Rooftops blacken to charcoal as flames spread over the announcement platform, turning it to ash.
Knight stares at the beast with wide eyes. “Why the fuck is he attacking the castle?”
Creed steps out into the yard, the color of his eyes shifting to white as he summons his magic. “London, we need the earth pixie. Can you call on your dragon to bring Kaia here?”
My head turns toward my brother’s mate.
She nods, staring at the dragon a second longer before her eyes close, hands open at her sides.
The dragon he speaks of isn’t really hers. These beasts belong to none and answer to no one. But my brother did kill her best friend, and the only way to bring him back was to put his soul into the one beast my brother could trust around his mate—the other guardians of Rathe.
So much for fucking that.
This particular dragon, though? He’s got a fucking chip on his shoulder. His wings beat the air slowly, as his chest inflates and he flies farther up.
“Get back!” Creed barks, hand flying out.
We bolt out of the way as flames spray completely uncontrolled across the land, showering the street in fire and burned wood. Gifted scatter like ants without direction to avoid being trampled.
I follow the line of smoke, of burned wood and whatever is left of it. My blood turns cold. He isn’t aiming at just anything.
“He’s aiming at us,” Sinner says, stealing my thoughts.
Creed and Knight look our way, brows drawn.
The dragon’s tail whips hard as he banks, the force of it slamming through a row of stone storefronts, collapsing over a group of screaming civilians.
“Get them out,” Knight’s voice snaps.
Silver and a few lower level healers are already moving, pushing our people back, dragging the injured out of the debris.