Chapter Four #2
Anger builds inside me, but then her palm presses at my chest and my eyes fall to hers.
Blue, swirling pupils stare up at me and I cock my head, the bond palpating in my chest, searching for…something. Safety, maybe. Or reassurance.
That dragon did point his flame at my mate.
I might be a King of Rathe, but my number one job as a son of the royal gods is to protect. And if there is one person I should go against my brothers for, one person I should rewrite the laws of Rathe for, the deepest parts of ourselves will forever be…my fated mate.
Live, breathe, die for.
But that dragon. It had eyes that burned through my skull. Blue…or green.
“What was that dragon?” I ask, looking up at Knight when he doesn’t answer.
He rests back against the table. “Pyrite dragon. They’re known for their tempers. Like to smash shit together to make things ignite.”
I never thought much about dragons.
They existed. They flew. They burned shit when they felt like it but caused no harm and nested in the far reaches of Darkadia, where nobody with half a brain would bother them.
Growing up, they were just part of the landscape, like the storms that rolled through the valleys or the gargoyles perched on the palace spires.
You didn’t study them because you didn’t need to.
They kept to themselves and we kept to ours.
But that one.
That fucking dragon.
I can still feel the hatred of those sapphire eyes, as if I’d done something to personally offend him.
Shit. I might have…the list is long.
My vision tunnels down to a single point somewhere past the ridgeline where the dark swallows everything whole.
Those eyes.
Green. Blue. Both. Neither. Color shifting like the dragon wasn’t just looking at me but through me, peeling back every layer until it found whatever rotten thing lives at the center of my—
Warm palms land on my thighs.
I jolt, spine snapping straight, air punching back into my lungs. My hand shoots down on instinct, fingers closing over smaller ones.
Arabella blinks up at me, her thumbs tracing slow circles against the muscles above my knees.
“You left me for a moment.” Her voice is soft. Steady.
I blink. Fucking and?
Wait…
I brush my knuckles over her cheek, feeling the heat of my brothers’ gaze on me. “How’d you do that?” I ask her. “Bring me back?”
Arabella’s mouth curves into a smug smile. “I’m your mate, silly. Your mind drifts and I tow you back in.”
Knight shifts, boots scraping stone. “Why?
Arabella shifts slightly toward him. “What do you mean, why?”
“Pyrite dragons,” I interrupt their shit because I don’t care. “Do they mark enemies? Remember faces?”
“You want a book answer.” Knight crosses his arms. “Or a battlefield one?”
My grip tightens on Arabella’s wrists. “I’ll take anything.”
Sinner laughs. “Nah, they don’t mark enemies. But they don’t forget, either, which is why gifted don’t make a habit of pissing them off.”
“Why does it matter?” Arabella asks.
Sinner glares. “We’re nowhere near made of the same shit they are. They’re indestructible, and we’re skin and bones with a bit of magic.”
Silence, and I swear Arabella’s annoyance would be funny if she wasn’t my mate.
She crosses her arms. “I don’t know. I’m not fazed by them.”
“Yeah? Then why ask for the ban?” Sinner laughs. “Is it cause you’re ‘not fazed’ that one didn’t seem too fond of you?”
“Sinner,” I growl, the warning thick in my tone.
He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah…”
“We’re not going to figure anything out up here,” Knight says, nodding toward the stairs. “Let’s go back to the archive room, see if we can figure out what’s missing in the pile of shit Creed left behind. Might help us figure out what he was looking for.”
I shake my head. “You do you, I’ve got other plans. “Pack your things, mate. We’re going back to Rathe U in the morning.”
Creed wants to run and hide, fine.
I’ll fucking chase.
…
I’m already running.
Rathe’s corridors blur past me, stone familiar under my boots, torchlight strobing across my periphery as I move.
There’s nothing in me right now except the need to catch her, pin her, make her stop.
She got out. Slipped the grip, vanished through a door I swore I closed, and left me standing in my own palace holding nothing but my own humiliation.
That she got out. That she made me chase.
The flagstone is cold under bare feet, I’m shirtless, jeans barely hanging on my hips, and I don’t give a fuck. I need to find her. There’s a pressure behind my ribs, heavy and slow, something clenched tight in its sleep, and I follow it the way an animal follows blood.
Her scent hits me first.
Ash. The specific kind that comes from burning something that should never burn. Under that, sea salt so concentrated it stings the back of my throat. And a layer of something organic and hot that my body instantly recognizes. My jaw tightens. I run harder.
Lying little witch.
She looked me in the eye. Made me believe she’d stay put.
Then slipped through my hands and got herself sent back to that shithole island.
And the way she did it— clean, quiet, like stepping out of a room she was never really in.
My jaw locks so hard my molars scream, and the pressure behind my sternum kicks once, hard, something large rolling over in its sleep.
I dismiss it. Adrenaline. Rage. Temper running hot because she’s close and I can’t get to her fast enough.
The corridor narrows.
I notice it the way you notice a door closing in a room you thought was open.
The ceiling drops, torches guttering down to nothing as if something ahead is eating the light.
I don’t slow. My shoulder clips the wall and tar smears across my skin, thick and warm, black shot through with gold.
It should bother me. It doesn’t. I drag my arm across my thigh and keep moving.
The floor shifts.
Rathe’s marble is gone, turning instead into volcanic stone: uneven, slick with condensation, walls pressing close on both sides with the geometry of something swallowed rather than built. The air thickens with every breath. The sound of wings is underneath everything, a low rhythmic percussion.
My boot comes down and I hear the ground crack, feel it give.
A flower, red as a split lip, black thorns curled like fingers, growing directly from a fracture in the volcanic floor.
I grind it to pulp. There’s a glow on the leather where the petals burst, pale blue-white, clinging to the sole of my boot.
I watch it fade as I run and don’t think about it except to note that it was there and now it isn’t.
The scent thickens. She’s close.
More flowers crack through the stone ahead, their petals fat and red with thorns hooking into the rock. I crush two more without slowing. The glow lingers longer this time, crawling up the leather before it dies.
The corridor spits me out without warning.
I pull up at the threshold because my body needs one second to process the sight before me.
The cavern arches overhead as the ceiling curves in deliberate lines, too precise for geology, too old for architecture. The air is wet and heavy, and blue light pools along the floor. What the fuck?
The walls sweat that wet tar, twisted among those strange, vined flowers, and right at the center, on a flat shelf of rock, she sits like a fucking meal.
I go fucking still.
Fitted in a black leather gown, it clings to her like she was poured into it, tight across her chest and hips, torn in places that are absolutely fucking deliberate.
Gone is the prey, and hello fucking hunter.
Her hair falls in dark waves over that bare shoulder, her breathing low and unaffected. With lips painted black, she looks like she chose all the steps that led us both to this point all to turn me into the meal.
Feral little nightmare with a painted mouth and a death wish.
Rage.
“You,” I say, and my own voice sounds unfamiliar to me.
She tips her head, that death-dripping mouth shifting just slightly at one corner, but she doesn’t run.
That’s worse than if she had.
I cross the cavern floor in nine strides until my hand finds its home around her throat. She comes up with me willingly, her hands finding my wrist and her fingernails already pressing in where my pulse runs.
Her heartbeat pounds against my palm, but her face remains passive, unbothered and completely fuckable.
“Liar,” I say against her face, my grip tightening.
She laughs, eyes peering up at me from below.
Her fingers don’t pull my hand away. They hold it there.
She wanted me fucking wild.
Lightning cracks down my rage, my guilt, and whatever else I’m feeling, turning my insides into liquid.
My grip on her tightens. I feel her swallow against my palm, feel the vibration of another laugh building in her throat, and the intent shifts under my skin, grinding into a new territory.
I’m not here to choke her out and fuck her until she cries.
I’m here to ruin her the way she ruined me.
I slam her into the wall, and her eyes roll back as the stone knocks the air out of her lungs.
My other hand curls around her jaw, feeling the lipstick under my thumb, the structural precision of her bone structure. I could stop. I fucking should stop—
My body has already made the choice.
I crush my mouth against hers, dragging her closer by the jaw, and the little growl she gives me vibrates against my tongue as I push past it.
Her teeth sink into my bottom lip hard enough to split it, and the copper bloom of my own blood floods the space between our mouths.
I groan into her, a sound that comes from somewhere primal.
My hands tear the leather of her gown and the rips along her ribs widen.
The slashes at her thighs become gaps. I peel her open because the dress is a fucking nuisance and I need to get past it.
“You ran,” I say against her mouth, blood smearing our lips.
Her nails rake down my bare chest, five lines of fire from collarbone to stomach.
“And you chased,” she replies, breathless. “What does that make you?”